What evidence of aliens would convince skeptics?

[Eburacum]

What will happen if it turns out there was something there, is that a whole lot more people will be unhappy with the way things are/were.

That is something we will probably have to deal with one day, when and if we finally find evidence of advanced alien civilisations. That has not happened yet, although it would be a very interesting thing to discover.

In particular, no biological evidence of alien DNA (or its equivalent) has surfaced anywhere on Earth; indeed, there is no evidence that any alien organism as small as a microbe has ever existed on Earth in the four billion year history of our biosphere long enough to leave a detectable trace.

I think that is very a good reason to suspect that life in the universe is rare, so rare that it has never had any influence on our history.

 

[beku-mant]

Not really. Multiverse are what happens when you remove posulates that would make them impossible. Theoretical physics is basically applied maths (hence the existence of "Department(s) of Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics" such as https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/ ), and mathematicians are perfectly happy to just remove axioms in order to see what happens with looser restrictions. After all, unless you have a reason to impose that restriction, which you don't (apart from "I don't like it"), then it's a perfectly valid path to follow.

(C.f the Banach–Tarski paradox "a pea can be chopped up and reassembled into the Sun" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach–Tarski_paradox that arises when you decide that you want the entirely reasonable Zorn's Lemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorn's_lemma , or the well-ordering theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-ordering_theorem , to be true - because both of those imply the less-immediately-obvious Axiom of Choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_choice , which the B-T paradox relies on. Throwing out that axiom removes such paradoxes (though you can argue it's not a real paradox, just definitely something that is superficially uncomfortable in implication), and that's an equally valid system to work within.



What's your payoff matrix? Thence, what's the game-theoretic optimal strategy?

There is at least usualy some general perception that theoretical physicists are at least trying to get us closer to understanding our physical reality, rather than just doing esoteric puzzles for fun and entertainment.

I don't know the optimal strategy, but we aren't anywhere close. I would suggest, scientists just should be scientists and do science, and be as open and honest as possible.

The news media should be held to a higher standard when it comes to science. I don't know how to do that exactly but a starting point would be pointing out the problem more and discussing it. When it comes to fake science videos on YouTube, it seems pretty easy to at least do better. It's not hard to detect these videos, where you have some thumbnail of Michio Kaku in tears, and a title suggesting an alien invasion has begun, and the whole thing is AI generated. YouTube doesn't take these down only because they make money off of them.

 

[Ann K]

Meanwhile, theoretical physicists freely propose hypotheses and theories about multiverses, the origin and fate of the universe, retrocausality, quantum consciousness...

Theoretical physicists discuss these hypotheses with each other; that's in the name "theoretical", of course, and it is far outside the ability of most individuals to even define the words, let alone engage in such speculation from a position of knowledge.

But scare-stories such as "I saw a light up there! They're coming to get us!" don't require a person to know anything about astronomy or physics, nor about astronomical distances or "warp speed" or "wormholes" or any of the other notions that they've picked up from watching sci-fi movies. Comparing the two, the hypotheses from knowledge vs the conclusions from ignorance, is a grave mistake. If we are ever to learn anything about alien beings and/or their possible approach to earth, I don't think it's ever going to come from the amateurs who can't distinguish a balloon from a butterfly.

 

[beku-mant]

Theoretical physicists discuss these hypotheses with each other; that's in the name "theoretical", of course, and it is far outside the ability of most individuals to even define the words, let alone engage in such speculation from a position of knowledge.

But scare-stories such as "I saw a light up there! They're coming to get us!" don't require a person to know anything about astronomy or physics, nor about astronomical distances or "warp speed" or "wormholes" or any of the other notions that they've picked up from watching sci-fi movies. Comparing the two, the hypotheses from knowledge vs the conclusions from ignorance, is a grave mistake. If we are ever to learn anything about alien beings and/or their possible approach to earth, I don't think it's ever going to come from the amateurs who can't distinguish a balloon from a butterfly.

They also aren't afraid to talk about these things in spaces where the public can hear them.

It's going to be mainly amateurs speculating about what's going on with UFOS as long as we keep blocking scientists from studying it.

And you say conclusions from ignorance, but then when it is discussed as a hypothesis, you still call it a claim, making little to no distinction between the two.

And then you bring up warp drive and wormholes, but as far as I am concerned part of the reason we have so much wormhole and warp-drive speculation around UFOs is that (1) we are in a difficult position to explain the extreme acceleration, (2) scientists have mostly not tried to touch the subject and propose alternate possibilities, and (3) years of misinformation about the feasibility of interstellar space travel and the distances involved has led to a false belief that you need faster than light travel for ET visitation to happen (which is kind of even a much worse part of the problem than putting the topic off limits to scientists, because this is a lie that was spread by abusing supposed scientific authority).

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Personally I'm impatient with all this tangential nonsense. I'll accept the same kind of evidence that Aliens are on Earth that we have that Canadians are on Earth. In other words... evidence. Not cooked up pseudo-evidence.

If you saw something in the sky you can't explain why couldn't it be evidence of Leprechauns? Leprechauns have a much longer history. Or it could be witches...

 

[JMartJr]

I can point you to a video of David Deutsch claiming there are countless alternative realities coexisting side by side interacting with each other through quantum effects. Or a video from some prestigious physicist claiming there might be an infinite sea of universes that are like bubbles in an endless foam. Or a video where a physicist says there might be infinitely many exact copies of you out there in the vastness of space. Or a physicist who says everything already happened, time is an illusion. Or a physicsit claiming that maybe we live inside of a black hole. Or a physicist claiming time might be 3 dimensional. Or one claiming microtubules in our brains might be causing consciousness by facilitating quantum collapse. And I can go on and on.

But... I can point to any number of scientists who would say that there MIGHT be life elsewhere in the Universe (Heck, I can probably find some that would say there is probably or likely to be life out there.) If we are going with "might," and "maybe," a lot of stuff is maybe possible, or even probable, but not supported by current evidence.

Might aliens visit, or have visited, Earth? For a variety of reasons, it seems unlikely, barring aliens that live a REALLY long time or generation ships. But those things are possible, and so I'd judge that alien life visiting us is, barely, possible. But is there evidence for it? NO, not really. (In my opinion, your mileage may vary, etc.)

Now if your point is that scientists don't want to get into UFO research, I agree. I see some good reasons for that -- the subject is over-run with cranks and hoaxsters, the phenomenon, if it exists, is intermittent and hard to isolate, and there have been studies done off and on and at various levels of effort and funding for 70+ years with NO payoff, no indication that devoting time to it is not wasting time, nor that further research is warranted. The first definitely helps create a stigma. (An earned stigma is not, I'd argue, a double standard nor unfair.) But the later two would be sufficient to suppress investing time and energy and resources in further study of "just another UFO report," or a number of them.

 

[John J.]

When it comes to aliens, something is very different in how we approach it. A hypothesis about aliens is in truth way less extraordinary than many other claims that scientists make all the time.

No, I don't agree that there is something different in how we approach the subject of possible ETI. The possibility of extraterrestrial life, and of extraterrestrial intelligence, is widely considered and commented on by astronomers, astrophysicists, planetary scientists etc. and has been for decades.

Frank Drake and Carl Sagan were not fringe figures in astronomy.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, Carl Sagan gave the (UK) Royal Society Christmas lectures in 1977, in which he discussed communication with ETI.
The Royal Society is hardly an underground or marginalised institution.
Aimed at young people, the lectures were broadcast on TV during the Christmas school holidays, nationwide, at a time when (in the UK) there were three TV channels.
I would guess many other countries have had mainstream TV programs that seriously discussed the possibility of extraterrestrial life (perhaps others here could confirm- @Mendel, @Gaspa, @Charlie Wiser?)
In the UK, the BBC's astronomy show The Sky at Night (broadcast since 1957) and Horizon science documentary series have discussed the possibilities of extraterrestrial life and (IIRC) ETI at various times.

I know the long-standing popular science magazine Scientific American has had articles about the possibility of alien life. The shorter-lived (and fondly remembered by me) Omni was another American publication that regularly featured reasonably sober articles about the search for/ possibility of alien life, as well as (IIRC) a semi-regular column about UFO sightings.
(Omni also published spectacularly good short SF stories).

The Pioneer and Voyager spaceprobes carry messages just in case they might ever be found by ETI. These were proposed and composed by mainstream scientists, and installed by the some of the finest engineers on the planet, at NASA, an agency of the US government.
Vikings 1 and 2 were designed to look for signs of extraterrestrial life; they were launched at a time (two years post-1973 oil crisis and US ending combat operations in Vietnam, 3 months after the fall of Saigon) when US confidence had taken severe knocks and money was tight. Yet the US government went ahead with that extraordinarily complex project.

There isn't an antipathy toward discussing extraterrestrial life within astronomy or the planetary sciences. The idea that there is is a straw man argument made by UFO enthusiasts disappointed by the lack of support that they receive from most relevant scientists:
(1) Astronomers etc. generally don't agree that our collections of anecdotes and blurry photos are evidence of ETI visiting Earth.
(2) THEREFORE Astronomers etc. aren't interested in hypothesized extraterrestrial life.

But many scientists clearly are interested in the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and extraterrestrial intelligence, and they have been successful in persuading national governments (most significantly, by a very long way, that of the USA) to back some of their efforts.

Repeated government investigations into the UFO phenomenon (again, most significantly in the USA) have not found any evidence whatsoever of ET existence, let alone ETI visiting Earth. The most likely explanation is, ETI are not visiting Earth.
UFO enthusiasts have never explained the mercurial nature of UFOs, frequently using ideas straight from science fiction (the "zoo hypothesis" or some galactic policy of non-interference à la Star Trek) or from "new age" musings (e.g. we have yet to achieve the necessary level of consciousness, whatever that might mean) as explanations for the visitor's nonsensical behaviours.

Many people report seeing/ interacting with UFOs. And many people report visitations/ interactions with figures known from their religious texts. Both sets of claims lack checkable objective evidence (this isn't to deny the importance of the experience to the experiencer, which may be profound). Establishing the objective reality of ETI visiting Earth would be an event of great importance. So would establishing the objective reality, and presence on Earth at a given location, of e.g. the archangel Gabriel. If anything, more so.
Many scientists around the world have religious or structured traditional philosophical beliefs, but very few push for the funding of e.g. an angel detection program.
There are exceptions;

A top Pakistani nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood once found an easy fix for his country's energy crisis. In an interview to the Wall Street Journal, he shared his inventive solution — tame the djinns. A djinn, similar to an angel, is a type of spirit in Arabic lore.

"Djinns and miraculous 'murgas': How bigotry scuppered Pakistan's space programme", The Economic Times (India) 22 August 2023, also

Sultan Bashiruddin, our top nuclear expert, believed he could draw electricity from captured Djinn. (For Pakistan's needs, just one Djinn would suffice.)

"Pakistan's Islamic Science: Tame 'Djinns' to fulfil all energy needs, says nuclear scientist", New Age Islam (Pakistan) Khaled Ahmed, 23 August 2014.
But most scientists with spiritual beliefs seem to make a distinction between matters of faith and matters of science. They realise that their beliefs do not require (and might not benefit from) scientific investigation, and calling for programs of scientific study of religious visitation might not be fruitful.
UFO enthusiasts often seem to think that sufficiently large and/or intense UFO detection programs will confirm their beliefs. But at present, there is no reason to think that this is so, because of the lack of evidence for ETI visitation of Earth, and the utter lack of any repeatable, testable finding or phenomenon that might be best explained by ETI visitation of Earth, either now or in the past.
The broad (not universal) scientific consensus is that ETI isn't visiting Earth. But it's hard to prove a negative, so UFO enthusiasts can claim that if only we devoted enough resources to the hunt, we'd find something remarkable.
It's a bit like an appeal to magic, a student wizard at Hogwarts trying to find the right words for a spell: If only we did the right thing, made the right effort, then the alien visitors- who have supposedly been seen travelling through our skies countless thousands of times, who have spent decades buzzing nuclear plants, airfields and warships, who have reportedly abducted hundreds if not thousands of people (showing, by-the-bye, a complete disregard for biomedical ethics, personal autonomy, dignity and welfare), then they will take the hint and reveal themselves.

Frankly, if ETI have been visiting Earth for decades, you'd expect them to realise that there are people here interested in talking to them.
Either they haven't been here (and possibly don't exist; the Drake equation and Fermi paradox are discussed elsewhere here) or they have no interest in talking to us. And are unlikely to confirm their existence. Obviously I don't know, but I think it's unlikely that an ETI with technologies probably millennia in advance of our own will be found in the vicinity of Earth if they don't want to be found.

If we are ever unambiguously contacted by ETI, and comprehensible, real-time or near real-time two-way communication somehow established,
I doubt they will say "Kenneth Arnold? Yes, he saw us. Black triangles? Our planetary survey department. Council Bluffs, er, yes, sorry, a bit of a problem with our reactor that works on scraps of iron, aluminium and silicon, send us the bill. Sorry for all the activity over New Jersey in December 2024. "

If we are physically visited by an ETI who wants to talk to us, I suspect we will all know about it. But I'm not sure that we can anticipate the nature of that contact, if it ever happens.

If open communication is established, it might be a huge hit for UFOlogy (although I doubt if discussing Barney and Betty Hill will be high on the visitor's agenda).
Or maybe not- there might just be new claims of cover-ups, calls for disclosure, and a new generation of unsubstantiated claims, YouTube videos and Reddit articles, many ignoring the new reality.

 

[Mendel]

I don't think we've yet worked out a very good set of norms in scientific communication and public relations. We heavily guard against unwanted sociological effects, and try to push back against and compensate for what we see as dangerous or undesirable sociocultural trends. But we frame and justify those actions in a misleading, or inconsistent way. We say extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. But we apply that even to hypotheses, or even casual informal suggestion of a possibility, and only for very specific sensative categories. We say, when it comes to those specific categories, a certain kind of hypothesis must be the last resort, and maybe shouldn't even be spokent about until everything else is ruled out.

The norm is falsifiability. We've repeatedly talked on Metabunk about what it means for a hypothesis to be falsifiable, and probably even to you. Nor is this a Metabunk thing, it's an important concept in the theory of science.

A hypothesis that's not falsifiable is not scientific, and since science is the pursuit of knowledge, that means you won't learn anything by taking it seriously. You'd be pursuing entertainment, not knowledge.

So why is this one topic treated very differently or inconsistently with how we treat other subjects?

It's not. It's just that people think it's scientific, but it only looks like it is.
It's treated the same as e.g. astrology.

But, one thing is for sure, it will be an awkward time if it turns out UFOs are real, and especially if it turns out we are being visited by aliens.

That's a double-edged sword, because it's also awkward when you die before anyone has found any evidence for aliens.

In fact, it's awkward right now to be believing in something for which there is no evidence in a field saturated with untrustworthy players.

 

[Mendel]

re: falsifiability,
answers to "What evidence of aliens would convince skeptics?" mean the sceptic position is falsifiable through evidence, while "What evidence of alien absence would convince believers?" has no answer.

 

[beku-mant]

re: falsifiability,
answers to "What evidence of aliens would convince skeptics?" mean the sceptic position is falsifiable through evidence, while "What evidence of alien absence would convince believers?" has no answer.

Rather than argue with you about this again. I'll just post ChatGPTs response, which I think is pretty on point.

That's a good and subtle question, and people have wrestled with it since Karl Popper's falsifiability criterion became a kind of "litmus test" for science. Let's unpack it carefully.


The argument you're referring to:
Some critics say the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is "unscientific" because you can't prove a priori that ETI does not exist. No matter how long you look and don't find anything, there's always the possibility it exists elsewhere, or at another time, or in a way you didn't think to look. So, the claim "ETI exists" seems unfalsifiable.


But there are several counterpoints:

1. Distinguish between a research program and a hypothesis.
   SETI isn't based on one rigid hypothesis ("ETI exists in location X"), but a whole program of empirical tests: point your radio telescope here, scan these frequencies, look for these types of anomalies. Each search design is falsifiable—if you expect signals above a certain threshold and detect none, that hypothesis is rejected. You then revise your models of ETI distribution, technology, or signaling behavior.
2. Falsifiability isn't the only hallmark of science.
   Modern philosophy of science (Kuhn, Lakatos, etc.) has moved past strict Popperian falsification. Plenty of scientific fields deal with questions that can't be absolutely falsified but can be constrained—cosmology, paleontology, climate science, even parts of particle physics. For example, "Dark matter exists" isn't falsifiable in one blow, but specific models of it are.
3. SETI produces negative results that refine expectations.
   Every non-detection rules out certain signal strengths, frequency ranges, or types of emission. That's testable, publishable science. For example: "No narrow-band signals stronger than X Jy were detected between 1–2 GHz from 1,000 nearby stars." That's falsifiable and reproducible.
4. Asymmetry of discovery.
   ETI confirmation is possible with even one solid detection. Non-existence everywhere isn't provable, but in practice science often works this way—black holes weren't confirmed until the 20th century, but astrophysicists had been reasoning about them for a long time. Similarly, life beyond Earth is a scientific question because we can imagine tests that would resolve it.
5. Comparison with other scientific searches.
   Searches for rare phenomena—gravitational waves, neutrinos, exoplanets—looked unpromising for decades. Their existence wasn't falsifiable globally, but the searches were still science, because they tested specific hypotheses and refined observational limits.

So, the most common modern view is:
The generic claim "ETI exists somewhere" is unfalsifiable.
But specific SETI investigations are scientific, because they generate falsifiable, quantitative hypotheses (e.g., "No civilizations in 10,000 nearby systems are transmitting beacons stronger than 10^13 W at 1–10 GHz").


The distinction is like: "life exists elsewhere" (broad metaphysical claim) vs. "no evidence of microbes in these Martian soil samples" (testable scientific claim).

 

[Ann K]

It's going to be mainly amateurs speculating about what's going on with UFOS as long as we keep blocking scientists from studying it.

I think you'll have to provide some significant evidence that "we keep blocking scientists from studying it". Many scientists are paid for their endeavors in fields that will prove advantageous to their employers, and UFOs are not known to fall into that category. Others choose their own research fields, and when you look at the scant and apocryphal evidence for UFOs over the past century, it's hardly surprising that few would choose to enter such a sterile and unverified field. "We keep blocking them" smacks of pure conspiracy theory.

 

[beku-mant]

I think you'll have to provide some significant evidence that "we keep blocking scientists from studying it". Many scientists are paid for their endeavors in fields that will prove advantageous to their employers, and UFOs are not known to fall into that category. Others choose their own research fields, and when you look at the scant and apocryphal evidence for UFOs over the past century, it's hardly surprising that few would choose to enter such a sterile and unverified field. "We keep blocking them" smacks of pure conspiracy theory.

You posted this right after a comment from someone else who is claiming that its not even possible to approach the subject using legitimate science at all, which you liked. I imagine most scientists don't want to be widely accused of not being a real scientist.

 

[John J.]

The argument you're referring to:
Some critics say the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is "unscientific" because you can't prove a priori that ETI does not exist. No matter how long you look and don't find anything, there's always the possibility it exists elsewhere, or at another time, or in a way you didn't think to look. So, the claim "ETI exists" seems unfalsifiable.

But that isn't the argument @Mendel was making (if I've understood correctly).

I haven't seen anyone here say SETI is unscientific. I'm broadly in favour of SETI. So (as already stated) were Drake and Sagan, who were noted mainstream astronomers.

Studying claimed UFO sightings is not SETI.
There is no testable evidence that claimed UFO sightings are caused by ETI artefacts.
People who believe, despite the lack of evidence, that claimed UFO sightings represent sightings of ETI craft might conflate searching for more sightings of UFOs with SETI, because they believe they are accruing more evidence for the existence of ETI artefacts.

ETI confirmation is possible with even one solid detection.

-But despite many thousands of claimed UFO sightings over nearly 8 decades, there hasn't been "one solid detection".

The point of this thread, "What evidence of aliens would convince skeptics", is to discuss what would constitute "one solid detection".

 

[beku-mant]

But that isn't the argument @Mendel was making (if I've understood correctly).

I haven't seen anyone here say SETI is unscientific. I'm broadly in favour of SETI. So (as already stated) were Drake and Sagan, who were noted mainstream astronomers.

Studying claimed UFO sightings is not SETI.
There is no testable evidence that claimed UFO sightings are caused by ETI artefacts.
People who believe, despite the lack of evidence, that claimed UFO sightings represent sightings of ETI craft might conflate searching for more sightings of UFOs with SETI, because they believe they are accruing more evidence for the existence of ETI artefacts.

-But despite many thousands of claimed UFO sightings over nearly 8 decades, there hasn't been "one solid detection".

The point of this thread, "What evidence of aliens would convince skeptics", is to discuss what would constitute "one solid detection".

Mendel did say unambiguously that SETI isn't scientific, even if only slightly indirectly or selectively. He also implies a whole host of high interest/value science isn't science, but SETI is a good example, because if one of the goals is to figure out if any UFOs have an extraterrestrial origin, that is literally SETI.

Claims that you can't do this, or that, are nonsense. Maybe you specifically don't know how, that doesn't mean there aren't people who can.

 

[FatPhil]

Frank Drake and Carl Sagan were not fringe figures in astronomy.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, Carl Sagan gave the (UK) Royal Society Christmas lectures in 1977, in which he discussed communication with ETI.
The Royal Society is hardly an underground or marginalised institution.
Aimed at young people, the lectures were broadcast on TV during the Christmas school holidays, nationwide, at a time when (in the UK) there were three TV channels.

Unfortunately, that's a fallacious argument with Eric Laithwaite and his gyroscopes as the counter-example.

 

[John J.]

Mendel did say unambiguously that SETI isn't scientific, even if only slightly indirectly or selectively.

I'm sorry, but it doesn't make sense to say that something is "unambiguous", and then say it was "...only slightly indirectly...".

I've quickly zipped through this thread; I could be mistaken- in which case, apologies- but I can't find any reference to SETI by Mendel.

SETI- as performed by radio astronomers- is a scientific endeavour. It is a search for testable evidence. Some of the assumptions made by SETI researchers might be questionable, e.g. the concentration on the 18 - 21 cm wavelength, "the "water hole", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_hole_(radio)) but there are limited resources and we have to start somewhere, and there are both practical (low radio noise) and theoretical (hydroxyl radical, atomic hydrogen radiate at 18 and 21 cm respectively; the two combine to form water) rationalisations for studying those frequencies (1440 - 1662 MHz).

He also implies a whole host of high interest/value science isn't science

He implies that, or you infer that?
Not all hypotheses are amenable to the rigours of experimental investigation, but all must be falsifiable. If we have a hypothesis which cannot be falsified, we've gone wrong somewhere. An unfalsifiable hypothesis is not a scientific hypothesis, it is an assertion, nothing more.

It might be fashionable in some corners of philosophy to criticise Popperian falsifiability. The increasing popularity of "Philosophy, Politics and Economics" as a bachelor's degree within some relatively influential circles (mainly in the English-speaking world) might (IMO) have exacerbated this trend; the output of material from PPE courses (and students, often from, ahem, influential backgrounds) will necessarily influence the online content trawled by LLMs like ChatGPT. Very few of those students, or their lecturers, will ever work directly in science, technology or mathematics. -In my honest, but jaundiced and fallible opinion.

[Quoting ChatGPT] Modern philosophy of science (Kuhn, Lakatos, etc.) has moved past strict Popperian falsification.

Kuhn's views on "paradigm shifts" in science are largely encapsulated in his 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the single most widely cited book in the social sciences.

Wikipedia, Thomas Kuhn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn
Note, social sciences. Good luck to anyone who thinks the social sciences will help in SETI. Or developing clean energy sources, finding treatments for the next pandemic illness or intercepting enemy missiles.
Philosophy of science, in some quarters, might have moved past "...strict Popperian falsification"; the physical sciences and technology employ it as a vital and extremely effective tool. (I would draw a parallel with peer-reviewed journals: Imperfect, but better than proposed alternatives).

...but SETI is a good example, because if one of the goals is to figure out if any UFOs have an extraterrestrial origin, that is literally SETI.

We have had nigh on 8 decades of "modern" UFO reports. There is not one iota of testable and/or repeatable evidence that any UFO report is due to ETI. Some UFOs undoubtedly have an extraterrestrial origin in the narrow sense that they are misidentifications of meteors or celestial bodies.
Despite the numerous claims of UFO close encounters, crashes, retrievals, dropped materials, landing traces and abductions, there is no physical evidence that any of these things has ever occurred. There is no reason to believe that any of these claims- even if believed by the claimant- has ever happened, unless we are prepared to accept anecdotes as evidence.
Historically, the more detailed and unambiguous, the more dramatic the claim that a UFO is an alien craft, the more likely it is to be a hoax (or in a very small number of cases, perhaps of unbidden psychological or neurological origin, like the succubi and incubi of sleep disorders).

As I posted in # 207, UFO enthusiasts cannot explain why UFOs behave so nonsensically. Even Jacques Vallee pointed out, long ago, that the number of claimed sightings exceeds that which might be expected from an ETI survey or surveillance of Earth (but took this as evidence that UFOs might therefore be transdimensional visitors, as if that explains anything).

The UFO phenomenon, as a socio-cultural meme in some parts of the world more than others, is undeniable. It has been pointed out on this thread that space-faring discs and orbs featured on the covers of pulp SF magazines in newsagents and on stands across the American nation for almost two decades before anyone reported having seen one "for real".

There have been thousands of UFO sightings/ encounters, not one has been shown to be of ETI origin.
This doesn't mean that the next UFO won't turn out to be an alien craft, but it must be likely that it will be yet another misidentification, tall tale etc.
Investigating UFO sightings would seem to be an extraordinarily inefficient (and if the last 78 years have been anything to go by, unproductive) means of conducting SETI.

Again, there is no real explanation why ETI, or an ETI artefact, would come all this way and then not announce its presence. The Day The Earth Stood Still -type scenarios of them being afraid of our nuclear weapons are patently ludicrous. If they are concerned about the impact that revealing themselves might have on us, then they could stay away: They clearly are not here to help. Think of the millions of innocent people killed or maimed in unjustifiable violence, or because of the effects of preventable disease and starvation since Arnold's sighting in 1947.
The fact that we might have been spared that suffering must be poor compensation to those who have not.
Maybe the ETI just prefers certain types of humans- those of us who live in places where we have the luxury of debating UFOs. Maybe they'll help us when the time comes.

It's going to be mainly amateurs speculating about what's going on with UFOS as long as we keep blocking scientists from studying it.

Scientists can only study claimed UFO sightings, as there are no UFOs (as in flying or spacefaring technological artefacts of unknown origin) to study.
Very few UFO claimants ever give any information that is amenable to further technical investigation:
Saying that something moves faster than existing aircraft, was silent in flight or carried out extreme manoeuvres doesn't tell us how these things were (reportedly) done, and several major aerospace companies / research groups (particularly in the defence sector) pursue these types of goals all the time. Supposition on how a UFO might have achieved any of these things is no different to trying to achieve those goals ourselves.
There was Betty Hill's star map. There are a few claims of material dropped from UFOs or retrieved from UFO crashes, none of those materials have ever supported the claimant's narrative when studied.

No-one's blocking scientists from studying UFO reports, at least not in the established democracies.
We have billion dollar-plus telescopes. When they detect something interesting or seemingly anomalous, those findings are followed up with great interest. Think of Jocelyn Bell Burnell's LGM-1 (Wikipedia PSR B1919+21). No astronomer is going to say "Oh, looks like an alien spacecraft,", crumple up the readouts and throw them in the bin.

 

[John J.]

Unfortunately, that's a fallacious argument with Eric Laithwaite and his gyroscopes as the counter-example.

On the contrary. Laithwaite showed that the Royal Society Christmas Lectures could be given over to someone with (ahem) unconventional ideas.

It does not alter the fact that the Royal Society is not a marginalised or underground institution,
or that its Christmas Lectures were on (UK) nationwide television, on one of three channels, during the school Christmas holidays.
It does not negate the fact that Carl Sagan gave the lectures in 1977, when he spoke about SETI.

I made no claim that the content of the RS lectures was always correct or as educational as intended.
The point being made was that a respected astronomer could talk about SETI as a real proposition on a nationwide TV program, and it was not considered to be bizarre, embarrassing or something he shouldn't be talking about. It was exciting.

 

[beku-mant]

I made no claim that the content of the RS lectures was always correct or as educational as intended.
The point being made was that a respected astronomer could talk about SETI as a real proposition on a nationwide TV program, and it was not considered to be bizarre, embarrassing or something he shouldn't be talking about. It was exciting.

They talked about radio astronomy based SETI, and things like Dyson spheres, but not SETI in general. Obviously the possibility an ETI could have already sent probes here has been, and still is, very heavily stigmatized, even though, under some assumptions we're more likely to find ET probes here than detect radio signals. Sean Carroll makes this argument even though he is certainly a skeptic.

We've looked for intelligent life, but we've looked in the dumbest way we can, by turning radio telescopes to the sky, and why in the world would a super advanced civilization randomly beam radio signals .. that doesn't make any sense ... if you though that there were other solar systems with with planets around them, where maybe intelligent life didn't yet exist but might someday, you wouldn't try to talk to it with radio waves, you would send a spacecraft there, and you would park it.

Source: https://youtu.be/1F77Jy7BJzQ?t=221

Some UFOs being of potential ET origin even much more stigmatized. Even though, as skeptical as you rightfully are, it turns out vehicles of some kind probably actually are and have been in our skies moving in ways our technology is not known to be able to replicate. And that makes the UFO phenomenon, although we don't know what they are, probably still one of the most salient phenomena we have at this moment in time for SETI, much more so than radio astronomy.

Sagan was a perfectly nice guy and a hero and inspiration to many, so I don't want to be too harsh on him. But some of his opinions were quite naive when it comes to SETI.

Again, there is no real explanation why ETI, or an ETI artefact, would come all this way and then not announce its presence.

You are free to have your gut feeling about it. But I would disagree. There are very good explanations for why an ETI would not come here and announce themselves. In fact, I think this is by far more likely than the alternatives.

 

[FatPhil]

On the contrary. Laithwaite showed that the Royal Society Christmas Lectures could be given over to someone with (ahem) unconventional ideas.

It does not alter the fact that the Royal Society is not a marginalised or underground institution,
or that its Christmas Lectures were on (UK) nationwide television, on one of three channels, during the school Christmas holidays.
It does not negate the fact that Carl Sagan gave the lectures in 1977, when he spoke about SETI.

I made no claim that the content of the RS lectures was always correct or as educational as intended.
The point being made was that a respected astronomer could talk about SETI as a real proposition on a nationwide TV program, and it was not considered to be bizarre, embarrassing or something he shouldn't be talking about. It was exciting.

If those following statements were not there to support the claim that the scientists were not fringe figures, then I don't see what they were intended to support.

One contrary stance that was available would have been to say that *after* Laithwaite (3/4 years?), the RI would have done better due dilligence, and thus that would support a narrative of broader scientific support. That's certainly believable. (However, technically they did do due dilligence on Laithwaite, and didn't approve his gyroscopic content: he went off-piste, and they kicked him out of the RS for it.)

However, one must note that being on nationwide television, and exciting, doesn't impute increased likelyhood that the content is good science, perhaps quite the opposite.

 

[Mendel]

So, the most common modern view is:
The generic claim "ETI exists somewhere" is unfalsifiable.
But specific SETI investigations are scientific, because they generate falsifiable, quantitative hypotheses (e.g., "No civilizations in 10,000 nearby systems are transmitting beacons stronger than 10^13 W at 1–10 GHz").


The distinction is like: "life exists elsewhere" (broad metaphysical claim) vs. "no evidence of microbes in these Martian soil samples" (testable scientific claim).

So which side of the distinction does "UFOs are real" or "we are being visited by aliens" fall on?

Mendel did say unambiguously that SETI isn't scientific,

SETI is scientific because it hypothesizes that there are civilisations similar than ours on other planets, and that they do similar things, which we can detect. That's a prediction, made specific by defining what kind of pattern in radio signals we might detect, and if we do, then we've falsified the null hypothesis, and if we don't, we have learned something.

because if one of the goals is to figure out if any UFOs have an extraterrestrial origin, that is literally SETI.

I highly doubt this is true, and would appreciate if you could source that claim.

Obviously the possibility an ETI could have already sent probes here has been, and still is, very heavily stigmatized, even though, under some assumptions we're more likely to find ET probes here than detect radio signals.

"Aliens are here, but they're hiding so well we can't ever find them" or "this looks like it breaks physics, must be an alien visitor" is not at all like SETI.
"There are white dots on 70-year old astronomical plates that we have no hope of ever identifying" is not at all like SETI.

We have sent probes to Mars and other planets. We've communicated with them through radio signals. These radio signals would be detectable on that planet even if e.g. the Martians missed the rover landings and couldn't find the rovers.

Most UFO endeavors, like most Flat Earth "science" experiments, are set up to produce ambiguous results that can neither prove nor disprove anything. That's why there is such a big divide between our answers to "What evidence of aliens would convince skeptics?" and what UFOlogy is actually doing. And the established (!) criterium by which we accept one but not the other is falsifiability.

UFOlogy is not concerned with finding simple explanations for unexplained observations, it's concerned with creating exciting stories about mysteries. It's Occam's Razor vs. Zondo's Beard.

There's nothing wrong with creating exciting stories about mysteries. Erich von Däniken is an entertaining read. It's when the people who do this are trying pass this off as science that the scientific establishment says, "this is not science, you're imposters". That's the "stigma", it's justified, and they're bringing it on themselves.

We don't stigmatize anyone who says, "I saw a strange thing in the sky, could this be a UFO?"
We stigmatize people who say, "we should study events with limited and bad evidence, because they might be interesting if we imagine we had better evidence". It's fiction, not science, and unwitting witnesses are roped in to support it.

 

[Mendel]

@beku-mant , you really need to take a good hard look at what you're defending.

You're defending people who park their RV on a deserted parking lot at night looking for a mystery, and the best they could find was a video of an aircraft while looking towards an airport, and the mystery of how 3 radar sets mounted on the same car could interfere with each other.

You are defending "scientists" who set up on a rooftop with cameras, but only look at those pictures they took while they rolled three 6s in a row on their cosmic ray randomness generator.

You are defending someone who thinks he can find millimeter-sized fragments of a meteor on an area of ocean floor that it might have impacted that's the size of a large county, via a crude way of deep-sea magnet fishing (and no idea of what that method would normally turn up).

You are defending someone who claims fake mummies must be alien because they sure don't look human.

And that's before we even get to the people who produce their endeavors as TV shows.

You're asking us that these be considered the same as people looking for a cure for cancer.

 

[FatPhil]

SETI is scientific because it hypothesizes that there are civilisations similar than ours on other planets, and that they do similar things, which we can detect.

Can we? In equivalent circumstances? Being able to detect our EM signals from a range of millions to billions of kilometers tells us very little about whether we could detect ourselves from a range of trillions to quadrillions to quintillions of kilometers. Not least because we'd be dwarfed by Jupiter and its magnetosphere's EM emissions and its moons' modulations thereof at those distances. But we're also not in the habit of wasting energy broadcasting our presence - almost all advances in telecommunications over the decades have been in the direction of lowering our joule per bit needs.

 

[jarlrmai]

I think any realistic SETI result is based on a specific signal intentionally sent at us rather than picking up stray signals.

 

[Mendel]

UFOlogy is not concerned with finding simple explanations for unexplained observations, it's concerned with creating exciting stories about mysteries. It's Occam's Razor vs. Zondo's Beard.

This is the important point.

SETI is really about observing all that cosmic radiation and asking what it's made of. There's a reproducible observation at the core (if you have a big antenna), shared data, and even shared analysis work with SETI@home. It takes a reproducible observation, hypothesizes "there are structured messages in there", and so far that's not been confirmed. It's not creating any mystery.

UFOlogy is about creating mysteries. A fuzzy blob on video is good for them, because they want to make it look mysterious.

All our answers to "What evidence of aliens would convince skeptics?" are designed to remove mystery. But when a believer asks the question, they really want to know how to create a good mystery for us.

We're not in the market for that. Some of us are really good at creating hoaxes. We don't do it because that's not what we want. We want to enlighten people, not confuse; not to make bunk, but to debunk.

I, personally, think that it is even a moral issue.

 

[Ann K]

You posted this right after a comment from someone else who is claiming that it's not even possible to approach the subject using legitimate science at all, which you liked. I imagine most scientists don't want to be widely accused of not being a real scientist.

You claimed that "We keep blocking scientists from studying it" (UFOs). I asked for evidence of your claim. This is unresponsive to my post.

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

I don't think we've yet worked out a very good set of norms in scientific communication and public relations. We heavily guard against unwanted sociological effects, and try to push back against and compensate for what we see as dangerous or undesirable sociocultural trends. But we frame and justify those actions in a misleading, or inconsistent way. We say extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. But we apply that even to hypotheses, or even casual informal suggestion of a possibility, and only for very specific sensative categories. We say, when it comes to those specific categories, a certain kind of hypothesis must be the last resort, and maybe shouldn't even be spokent about until everything else is ruled out.

Meanwhile, theoretical physicists freely propose hypotheses and theories about multiverses, the origin and fate of the universe, retrocausality, quantum consciousness, block-universes, all kinds of different unproven, maybe even unprovable, and very extraordinary things - things that could hardly get more extraordinary. You have dozens and dozens of alternative and conflicting theories, about some of the most extraordinary things possible, being proposed and argued by different people who are nevertheless perceieved as credible scientists.

And this is even considered a good thing. Because the universe is wierd and poorly understood in a lot of ways, and the more people working on these problems from different angles, the less likely we are to have overlooked something. The thing is, it is understood that at the end of the day, what is left unproven is left unproven. Some things scientists are proposing are not even provable, or are unlikely to be, but still welcomed because they are interesting possibilities to think about.

When it comes to aliens, something is very different in how we approach it. A hypothesis about aliens is in truth way less extraordinary than many other claims that scientists make all the time. If the norms prevent people from making hypotheses or even talking about an area of inquiry without risk to their reputation, it effectively closes that area of inquiry off from science.

So why is this one topic treated very differently or inconsistently with how we treat other subjects? Probably for historical and cultural reasons. Maybe a bit to do with human desire to feel like we are at the center of the universe, if not physically, at least spiritually or in terms of intelligence. Maybe it is a byproduct of people being pissed off at fraudsters and hoaxers and pseudo-scientists. Maybe a stigma created and reinforced by bullies.

But, one thing is for sure, it will be an awkward time if it turns out UFOs are real, and especially if it turns out we are being visited by aliens. The inconstency and special rules used to manage public perception about the sensative topic, will shift from something many people accept as some form of responsible scientific communication protocols that were necessary because of how wackadoodle the general public seems, to something considered nefarious, backwards, and stupid.

I'm just chiming in from the comm angle here, leaving the physics stuff to the others like Phil.

On the first para. I actually debate this. We do actually have a lot of great ethical and moral guidelines, both respective to each field, and cross-applied. These being followed is an entirely different story.
As one basic example, the cannabis industry for the most part flagrantly ignores scientific communication ethics (in fact the term itself is rare in the industry). This doesn't mean they're not there, or that absolutely no one follows them. Just a majority do not. For those of you who participate in the legal market - your budtenders are most literally conducting science communication. When they are telling you about a 'strain' and its potential impacts based upon observations or self-reports, is a type of science communication. This also being a great micro- example since most are not at all trained to do this accurately and promote misinformation all the time.

As to the second part of that first paragraph, I somewhat agree, but I do not agree in this specific comments framing. Just as an example on the hypothesis front right. We have nothing, at all, to predicate extraterrestrial existence. We have nothing we can use to grade or weigh this hypothesis. We can of course come to the conclusions others are less likely - but we cannot come to a true conclusion this is likely in any case, because we have no relevant information to weigh it. The information we *could* use to weigh it, like has been proposed in "what would make X believe" responses, also has no provable connection to anything ET related, so our "likelihood" there would be based off lessening the other hypothesis, not actually truly assessing the base likelihood of the ET conclusion.

"Hypothesis" are also suppose to be falsifiable, so the sorts of hypothesis' you point out there are still accurately formed, at least in generality. This is a confusion that gets made a lot because a hypothesis is not suppose to be provable. The exact examples you gave, I'm not a physicist or anything so someone like Phil could probably chime in on if those are worded or framed properly, that does get more field specific.
A bit of confusion that comes there too is theories vs rules, this can differ a bit depending on your field. In most branches of psychology for example, "theories" are explicitly not suppose to encompass everything. So if your theory leaves out ET that is not intrinsically an issue, although other elements of your study/research could raise the debate it'd be better practice to add the hypothesis.

What you are talking too there, is not necessarily "science communication" (the field and/or practice of professionally communicating science), but more the casual communication of science. Eg how Bob the physicist may casually speak about his own theories on Twitter.
As a scientist, this is of course a very difficult personal line and a fantastic example of just how tricky these subjects are. Since Bob here is a scientist, and he is communicating, about science - his casual communcation could result in the development and adoption of beliefs in others that are inaccurate, unscientific, or unethical in the SC regard. Equally though, most scientists are not experts or even specialists in science comm, that is a comm field. What most scientists learn is the short-form applied practice, not the actual concerted field.


"When it comes to aliens, something is very different in how we approach it. A hypothesis about aliens is in truth way less extraordinary than many other claims that scientists make all the time. If the norms prevent people from making hypotheses or even talking about an area of inquiry without risk to their reputation, it effectively closes that area of inquiry off from science."
This exact quote also provides a good example of the issue with this in the science, but, not necessarily in the direction you are thinking.
I noted above but again, since we have no information showcasing extraterrestrial life exists in any form, no information we have can actually provide a direct weight to this hypothesis/discernable hypothesis connected to it. We can only do so indirectly. Noting that hypothesis are suppose to be falsifiable, not provable - here is the problem. This research happens plenty, the ET hypothesis is falsified and continuously has been. This even happens when the woo crew companies fund their own studies. People hold out on the studies that either a) seek to prove the hypothesis, and come to null results or b) its an entirely bunk "study" (like when Avi goes on about every interstellar object being an ET ship). Even in these hold out cases though the point I raised still applies - they themselves showcase no information can actually, legitimately be used to directly weigh this. They rest on indirect weightings, so even if there was a legitite "proven" hypothesis here, we could also make a heavy debate its potentially concluded as such based off confirmation bias, rather than the data actually showing so - why? Because nothing exists to directly weigh it. Yet at least.

The rest of the problem past here is really simple. There just aren't that many scientists interested in it to the extent to carry out these sorts of studies on that wide of a scale. The ones that are, do in fact do it. Interestingly most of the "stigma" dynamic in relation to scientists at least apparently only "prevents" 'believer' scientists from it, but, does it? They still do their studies, they just claim stigma impacts it. When we look at the non-believer scientists, the "stigma" thing is never really brought up. We can also use the non-believer scientists that have done this sort of research to showcase its not really negatively impactful for their careers.
Now, this isn't entirely true with pilots, but the 'believer' crowd loves to intermix these sorts of references (no help the exploiters do too). The "stigma" people talk about there is really more of a thing with say pilots and intelligence analysts, not research scientists. I've also shared countlessly how, the "core" of all this, actually roots out of cold war era government science dynamics which were very much woo accepting.
You are, on the other hand, somewhat correct though that yes, social, cultural, religious, etc factors all impact this for any given individual and ingroup.


"Special rules to manage public perception"
This doesn't happen in this space. There's no one giving out rules to "manage public perception" - the only people even trying too are foreign adversaries and the exploiters who've embedded themselves into the CTer communities.
If that is a reference to the science communication bit, that is not it. I also highly caution this reference because, unlike other communication fields, science communication does and for very good reason has a "hard wall". SC is purely about providing accurate information about science. It is not about managing, influencing, or controlling public discourse, narratives, beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, perceptions, emotions, etc.

It's not a sensible position in the first place to have such a schizophrenic approach to science and science communication. If we argue it is worth it, to try and manage public beliefs, we still have to justify that. Right now some will agree, some wont. What will happen if it turns out there was something there, is that a whole lot more people will be unhappy with the way things are/were. Regardless if you believe managing public belief through special scientific communication norms is worth it, how about the fact that a much bigger cause of scientific misinformation or misinterpretation stems from your run of the mill news media, which seem consistently incapable of presenting science or scientific results accurately and use misleading click bait, or even worse YouTube, where you get so many AI generated fake science videos that you can hardly search for a real science video and find one unless you already know the YouTuber that created it.

Then we act like scientists are supposed to step in and save us from all of this non-sense. The more we get overwealmed with AI generated fake science, the more they have to jump in and tell us don't beleive this, don't believe that, and we better be careful what we say in case the news hears us and talks about it, and so on. It's not really sustainable. They're already being taken out of context, and there perceived credibility already used by fabricated content. I think we have to bite the bullet and accept it isn't working anyways, and just let scientists be scientists and do science.

For your first sentence here, I would offer that you've made multiple errors yourself in casual communication of science throughout these 2 posts. In proper SC terms, you would've been in the wrong and acting unethically. I don't mean this in a rude way, but contextually this does show you may not have the developed knowledge about the field or applied practice to declare its practices as "schizophrenic".

The rest of what you get into there is not at all about SC either. It's just casual communication of science. The sorts of categorical errors you're reaching for here are ones you've made in these posts. SC is not about any form of managing or influencing beliefs or anything.
You would be confusing distinct fields here. Such as for example, "Health"/"Public Health" Communication is the proper term for communication initiatives seeking affective changes in the public health space, this involves a lot of messaging related to science. When science is communicated in these initiatives, SC principles are applied to ethically communicate the scientific information. What you are getting at there would instead rest with the Health/Public Health comm initiative (and that fields practices), rather than the SC principles being applied to inform specific messaging products and engagement opportunities.

 

[Edward Current]

Meanwhile, theoretical physicists freely propose hypotheses and theories about multiverses, the origin and fate of the universe, retrocausality, quantum consciousness, block-universes, all kinds of different unproven, maybe even unprovable, and very extraordinary things - things that could hardly get more extraordinary. You have dozens and dozens of alternative and conflicting theories, about some of the most extraordinary things possible

I actually don't think they're extraordinary. We're talking about the totality of existence across all of space and time, and all of the theories are pretty much on equal footing. Yeah, they're far outside of the sphere of our everyday experience, but of course all-encompassing theories about cosmology and the foundations of quantum mechanics are far outside of the sphere of our everyday experience. That doesn't necessarily make them extraordinary. Furthermore, of course accepting any one of those theories over the others will require commensurate evidence, as it always does.

If one of the theories postulated that the universe sits on the back of a giant eternal turtle, that would be extraordinary.

 

[JMartJr]

But, one thing is for sure, it will be an awkward time if it turns out UFOs are real, and especially if it turns out we are being visited by aliens.

Just wanted to circle back to this -- on a lighter note, we might achieve maximum awkwardness if the aliens show up in a shiny silver saucer strongly resembling, say, an Adamski scout ship, but announce that this is their first visit and all the previous UFO sightings were not aliens at all! Consternation all around!

Which is to point out that aliens showing up in the future may not confirm at all that they have showed up in the past. When Buzz and Neil landed on the moon, that did not imply that Lucien, De Bergerac or Cavor had been there previously.

 

[Eburacum]

Even though, as skeptical as you rightfully are, it turns out vehicles of some kind probably actually are and have been in our skies moving in ways our technology is not known to be able to replicate.

This seems to be an inaccurate statement. The word 'probably' seems to assume that the various witnesses to these phenomena have interpreted them correctly.; however, again and again, these witnesses have been shown to be mistaken.

Science certainly has a role to play in analysing these sightings, but when the phenomena concerned turn out to consistently have mundane explanations, should we then reject science and start using some other metric, such as trust or credibility?

 

[Eburacum]

Which is to point out that aliens showing up in the future may not confirm at all that they have showed up in the past.

Absolutely. I am very optimistic that we will eventually make contact with alien species, and hopefully have enough in common with them to have some sort of communication. However, I am almost certain that they will (truthfully) deny having anything to do with our UAP/UFO sightings, and also that they will have UFO/UAP sightings of their own.

In other words, every species in the universe has a Low Information Zone, and every species will have phenomena they can't explain. Hopefully the majority of advanced aliens are smart enough to realise that the LIZ is a universal phenomenon, and it is no use chasing phantoms beyond the edge of identifiability.

 

[beku-mant]

@beku-mant , you really need to take a good hard look at what you're defending.

If you want to argue that some efforts some people have made were not scientific, or even that most have not been, that is a valid argument I would even agree with.

But you're making an argument not just about those people you don't like, you're making a philosophical statement about science itself. You're making claims about every person trying to demystify UFOs now and in the past, and also everyone that could ever exist in the future.

 

[Eburacum]

Surely the people working hardest to 'demystify' UAPs/UFOs are the skeptics who analyse photographs and video clips and find reasonable, mundane explanations for them? With some significant success, I might add.

 

[beku-mant]

Surely the people working hardest to 'demystify' UAPs/UFOs are the skeptics who analyse photographs and video clips and find reasonable, mundane explanations for them? With some significant success, I might add.

And anyone trying to demystify the UFO phenomenon who doesn't agree with you is immoral and by definition not capable of scientific status?

 

[beku-mant]

In other words, every species in the universe has a Low Information Zone, and every species will have phenomena they can't explain. Hopefully the majority of advanced aliens are smart enough to realise that the LIZ is a universal phenomenon, and it is no use chasing phantoms beyond the edge of identifiability.

The most compelling UFO events were not observed in low information zones. They are claimed to have been viewed up close, by many people, doing unambiguously extraordinary things. Either they are all lying, or some of them saw something extraordinary.

If you want to assign a negligible probability to the possibility they aren't lying, then that is your choice.

For me, the probability that some of these sightings are accurate descriptions is around 0.99, but that is largely because I myself have seen something extraordinary.

Although, I would consider smaller estimations to be reasonable, even as low as 1%. But even a 1% probability is not insignificant when it comes to something that extraordinary. If there is a 1% chance something that extraordinary is true, you would be foolish to ignore it (assuming you care about the extraordinary thing extraordinarily).

 

[Eburacum]

The most compelling UFO events were not observed in low information zones.

An example would be useful, backed up with photographic or video evidence.

They are claimed to have been viewed up close, by many people, doing unambiguously extraordinary things. Either they are all lying, or some of them saw something extraordinary.

You are dismissing the possibility that they all saw the same phenomenon, but misinterpreted it. The Phoenix Lights is a good example of this. No-one was lying, except perhaps Governor Symington.

 

[beku-mant]

Personally I'm impatient with all this tangential nonsense. I'll accept the same kind of evidence that Aliens are on Earth that we have that Canadians are on Earth.

The point I made originally isn't tangential, it's just being lost in the noise and backlash.

We might never know for sure if aliens are observing us, or if some UFOs were alien craft. We can all come up with a threshold in the level of evidence we require before believing it. But unless you're just a simpleton who is uninterested and irrelevant, why just a binary threshold? Will your attitude, interests, and actions flip from 0 to 1 the moment that threshold is crossed? Are we all supposed to agree on the threshold, and then act like its all nonsense up until the point we're all convinced and then suddenly all treat it like a mega big deal? Before that happens, you're insane if you believe it, and after you're fine? Before that scientists are ridiculed for trying to figure it out, after they're legit? Before that no need for transparency about what the government knows, after OK now we should get to see it?

 

[beku-mant]

An example would be useful, backed up with photographic or video evidence.

You are dismissing the possibility that they all saw the same phenomenon, but misinterpreted it. The Phoenix Lights is a good example of this. No-one was lying, except perhaps Governor Symington.

The Phoenix lights are a bad example, because it was something described as moving slowly. Even if it were not an optical illusion, it is something that known technology could plausibly replicate.

 

[Eburacum]

For me, the probability that some of these sightings are accurate descriptions is around 0.99, but that is largely because I myself have seen something extraordinary.

I would like to have been there, to see what you saw. If I had been there, I can imagine several results;

1/ I could possibly explain this phenomenon as something mundane, and convince you that my explanation was correct. I've seen at least five extraordinary events in the sky myself, and explained them all to my own satisfaction, although I'm still a little puzzled by some of them. Who flies large, jet-black balloons next to a tourist helicopter route?

2/ The event could have been so convincing that I would be forced to accept that something inexplicable had happened. That is obviously your experience. However I would still have some suspicion that we had both made a mistake.

3/ If we could not explain the phenomenon adequately from our location at that particular time, I would like to have the option of observing it from a different location, to compare notes. This would allow us both to eliminate any gross observational errors and almost certainly identify the root cause of the observation. I know it is not possible in practice for single observers to observe such phenomena from several different viewpoints, but this can be achieved in some cases (such as the Phoenix Lights). Multiple witnesses observing from multiple angles have provided enough information to explain these events adequately.

4/ If this multiple viewpoint observation were not enough, then I'd be very keen on filming the objects concerned, and submitting the results on this forum - almost any sighting can be explained given enough information, preferably on film. I'd also be fairly confident that when the film was analysed, it would look significantly different to how we both remember it (and would probably also highlight the fact that we both remember the events differently from each other). Memory is the worst cause of confusion in these cases, it seems; observers are generally honest, not liars, but they are bad at recalling the facts.

 

[Mauro]

Either they are all lying, or some of them saw something extraordinary.

This is properly called a false dichotomy.

 

[beku-mant]

This is properly called a false dichotomy.

Anyone can arbitrarily set the threshold to accept anything as true as high as they want, up to and including infinity. To make use of any information in the real world, we have to practice some kind of epistemics. I could re-frame what I said as a probabilistic statement, that it is exceedingly unlikely or something. But in practice we often do implicitly set thresholds and speak of things we are exceedingly certain of without being careful to acknowledge anything is technically possible and nothing is knowable.