Or a sign of a normal person having a conversation on the internet…

No. Crank. Normal people don’t do those things.

That was my point, because I misinterpreted what you meant.

No. You said what I said you said. Then you changed what you said. There was no misinterpretation. You got caught. So you changed the story.

Now you are trying to gaslight me about it. Which is definitely crank.

My response was about UFO videos in general.

We are either talking about the specific evidence we were talking about, or you’ve been wasting our time. You choose.

I didn’t say that.

Yes. You did.

I’m not trying to sell anything.

Yes. You are. You’ve explicitly stated several assertions you’ve attempted to defend.

Now that you failed, you are trying to invent a more heroic narrative about how you’re “just asking questions,” or some such nonsense, that completely blanks on everything you actually did up to now. More gaslighting.

The link to the Nimitz report is broken, btw.

Use archive.org.

Underwood capturing the video right after (within hours)

That is not “right after.”

Nor is a moving sea platform the same location as the Favor encounter (not even close). It’s not even the same place as the platform was hours before (ships move).

Thanks for the patronizing sermon…

Refusing to learn how to think critically by calling it patronizing is a classic evasion of the crank.

You messed up and need to do better; which only tells me about your skills. Delivering childish, emotional excuses not to then tells me about your character.

Maybe someday you will escape your delusion and realize that.

“Cranks never listen…”
“Another sign of a crank.”
“Telltale crankery.”

Or a sign of a normal person having a conversation on the internet… Calm down dude…
Everybody is not trying to get you or something…

“That wasn’t your point.” (about Cote)

That was my point, because I misinterpreted what you meant. Did you know that can happen sometimes?

“None of which is about the videos in question.”

Wait. I was responding to your general statement about UFO videos being ambiguous, right?
My response was about UFO videos in general.

“You said there were secretly higher resolution, clearer versions of those videos…”

I didn’t say that. Read my comment again. And don’t be such a crank please… Twisting my words like that…

“the alternative explanation you are trying to sell…”

I’m not trying to sell anything. Specially not an “alien” explanation, if that’s what you are suggesting. I just disagree with some aspects of your article.

“You also need to read the original reports.”

The link to the Nimitz report is broken, btw. I read it some years ago.
So, the north-south and east-west movement of the tic-tac was correct (the “ping-pong” analogy was later).
The thing zipping off when Fravor engaged is there too.
Underwood capturing the video right after (within hours) Fravor landed (not another day like you said) was correct too.
The tic-tac actually moving to the left was there too.
By correct I mean it’s in that report.
Whatever. I’m sure you can incorporate all of that anyway.

“This is the lesson you need to learn.”

Thanks for the patronizing sermon… I guess…
Maybe a lesson for you is not to consider every dissenting comment as… whatever lead you to accuse me the way you did in this last comment.
If that’s just the way you deal with people, fine. Then I know better now.

Cranks never listen to evidence and never correct a fallacy even when called out. I’ll let my readers decide if you qualify.

—

The prior has very low confidence, because we don’t know enough

That’s not how priors work, or even correct language for discussing them.

To get up yo speed on how this actually works see Naturalism Is Not an Axiom of the Sciences but a Conclusion of Them and Christianity Is a Conspiracy Theory for examples adaptable here.

And for why apologetical attempts to get around the laws of mathematics don’t work see The Cost of Making Excuses and Jesus and the Problem of the Fraudulent Reference Class for examples adaptable here.

My point is that those are better than the vast majority of videos.

That wasn’t your point. So now you are rewriting history to avoid admitting you were refuted. Another sign of a crank. Your claim was that Cote and Kumburgaz were not “in ambiguous footage” but “pretty clear.” That’s false. They are textbook examples of what I said: “That ‘UFOs’ always only ever show up in ambiguous footage like this is evidence they are not remarkable.” Your examples prove my point, not yours.

Christopher Mellon and John Ratcliffe talked about satellite imagery. Luis Elizondo, Sarah Gamm, and probably others have talked about it.

None of which is about the videos in question. You said there were secretly higher resolution, clearer versions of those videos that somehow challenge my interpretations. That’s false. You are thus again evading the actual point and trying to pretend we were talking about something else. Telltale crankery.

“Yes, we do.” (about the Gimbal being a jet) No, we do not. It’s a blob. Indeterminate.

False. As linked, we have comparable examples and thus can tell exactly what it looks like, right down to the rotations, which were recreated in the lab, proving the known result.

Ryan Graves describes what they saw in the “SA”: 4 to 6 objects in a wedge formation, with the gimbal object following.

Not on camera or seen by the pilot. You are confusing the radar data and the Gimbal Object, neither of which were ever confirmed to be the same thing. The flight was chasing down a radar ghost and caught a distant airliner and just “assumed” they were related.

Read the article you are commenting on. I explain all this. That was a test of essentially a proto-AI radar integration system, so the radar signals in the planes were being “juiced” by a computer on the ground, attempting to “see” through stealth tech. The test was meant to gauge the sensitivity and reliability of the technique. The result was that it was over-sensitive, and reading clouds and turbulence and pressure differentials and other atmospheric noise as objects, and the computer was “guessing,” creating the ghosts. That is why the pilot was seeing things on radar that were not matching what was on camera. The pilot kept looking until he found one thing, which still didn’t match, but he just assumed it must be the thing. In reality it was a ground computer hallucinating. And the existence of a distant airliner was just a common coincidence. The situation led him to misread what he was looking at because he was primed by the false radar data. A common outcome and no doubt exactly why the video clip was in the classified training reel, to teach pilots not to make that mistake again.

The objects turn 180° and the gimbal follows them, apparently performing a vertical U turn with a very tight radius.

None of this is correct. The Gimbal never changed course. The radar ghosts did. You are again confusing the two. Just like the pilot did.

You are stacking them into an absurd hypothesis, imo.

A hypothesis based on extensively proven scientific evidence as a common thing is the opposite of “absurd.” This is how you are failing to correctly order your priors. In the reference class, the errors I am describing are documented to be common; the alternative explanation you are trying to sell has never been documented once. My relative prior follows; not yours.

Fravor and Dietrich are tasked to go check a contact in the Princeton’s radar. So something was actually visible to radar (not the radars in the jets).

The radars are the same: they were testing an integrated system where what the planes show is juiced by a computer running guesses on the ground. And that computer was using multiple plane (and ship) inputs to develop a guess as to the total radar theatre. This system was prone to glitches, as it hallucinated targets in its attempt to see stealthed targets (targets with extremely small reflectivity). That it glitches like this all the time is one of the reasons all this is getting classified: we don’t want our enemies to know this is a problem with our system, much less give them ideas of how to spoof or scramble our system. I explain all this in my article. You seem not to be reading my article here.

You also need to read the original reports. I link to them. You keep relying on later, corrupted, and increasingly elaborated memories. The only usable data is what was originally reported. Because memories contaminate and alter easily—that’s extensively scientifically proven. So you need the earliest, most official record of recall, not later, elaborated versions that have been repeatedly contaminated by other sources and beliefs. Those are useless data here. Worse than fuzzy film.

This is the lesson you need to learn. Because this is the whole point of my article: failing to account for what we actually do know about human perception and memory and how they often fail, what we do know about film and radar and how they often fail, and so on, and replacing it with extraordinarily improbable dreams, is a failure to think critically that can only damage your ability to think on every other subject, even matters of dire importance to your fellow human beings—like political and economic realities around you right now. Which are way the fuck more important than wild fantasies about random objects that never do anything that actually matters, like down planes or kill people or take away their healthcare or human rights or cause wage stagnation or a collapsing bond market. If you can’t critically think about this UAP trivia, you won’t be thinking critically about things that matter. And that’s a serious problem you need to attend to. Stat.

“In other words, we know the prior is very, very, very low. Just as with the prior for gremlins causing plane crashes.”

The prior has very low confidence, because we don’t know enough (about life in the universe, etc). If you, subjectively, give a lot of credence to it, fine. Have at it.
We know a lot about planes crashing, so the gremlins example doesn’t fit well.

“Cote is vague and fuzzy and distorted.”

My point is that those are better than the vast majority of videos.
If by “ambiguous” you mean we can’t establish the kind of mundane explanation you’ve already decided is the truth, then yes, I agree. I don’t defend any explanation, btw.

“No, we do not.” (about the existence of better classified videos)

Christopher Mellon and John Ratcliffe talked about satellite imagery. Luis Elizondo, Sarah Gamm, and probably others have talked about it.
That’s a bizarre point from you, imo.

“Yes, we do.” (about the Gimbal being a jet)

No, we do not. It’s a blob. Indeterminate.

“That’s not true.” (about the radar data in Gimbal case)

That’s 100% true, at least. This is the Gimbal case. Ryan Graves describes what they saw in the “SA”: 4 to 6 objects in a wedge formation, with the gimbal object following. The objects turn 180° and the gimbal follows them, apparently performing a vertical U turn with a very tight radius.
You must be refering some other case.

“Emotional dislike of a cause does not have any bearing on its probability.”

My apologies, Mr Spock 😉 I’m not dismissing them. You are stacking them into an absurd hypothesis, imo.

“I already explain how he got confused.”

No. You explained what you think might have happened.

“Underwood never saw the object.”
“The object was never visible to radar.”
“Underwood took the long-range infrared video (the “tic-tac”) on a different day and place.”
“You’re repeating the output of an internet telephone game”

Couple of things, in chronological order.
Fravor and Dietrich are tasked to go check a contact in the Princeton’s radar. So something was actually visible to radar (not the radars in the jets). When they are on merged plot they see the frothing and the tic-tac.
The tic-tac was moving back and forth, north-south and east-west, like a ping-pong ball (in a glass). Not smoothly like a helicopter, but abruptly.
He engages while Dietrich looks from above, until the tic-tac disappears when he got close.
They go back to the carrier and apparently immediately (or not too long after on the same day), not a different day like you said, Underwood goes out and is tasked to follow a new radar contact by the Princeton.
There he detects a tic-tac object (maybe the same as before, maybe not) with his radar (third tic-tac related radar contact), and makes the video, in which the thing actually goes left abruptly and he loses it completely.

Anyway, I think I’ve expressed my objections sufficiently.
Very “Final Destination-esque” hypothesis you have.

We don’t know the probability of “aliens” (or better, NHI), though.

Yes, we do. We know it to an a fortiori limit. Which is all we need here.

In other words, we know the prior is very, very, very low. Just as with the prior for gremlins causing plane crashes. Whereas many other explanations we know have observable frequencies and thus have very much higher priors.

The turkish UFO (Kumburgaz) is pretty clear, for example. Or the lake Cote one.

No, they aren’t.

Kumburgaz is a crappy, hazy video with far more obvious causes. In multiple ways it’s at the limits of sensory resolution, hence exactly as ambiguous as every other case.

Cote is vague and fuzzy and distorted. That one is particularly clearly an optical illusion because it wasn’t visible to the pilot who took the photo. It only appeared when the photo was developed. Which suggests it was a defect in photo processing. Although, as the size was grossly overestimated originally, it could also be the wake of a reversing boat, the negative damage is more likely.

We are only seeing the videos the military release.

I already discuss why this tells us these aren’t really UFOs. It seems obvious that in fact they identified them (since what they are is pretty obvious), and they were using this clip reel to teach pilots to recognize these illusions so they wouldn’t be fooled by them in real situations.

The content of the accompanying lecture would have been classified because we don’t want to teach our enemies how to spoof our pilots or sensors or what their capabilities or limitations are (I’m well familiar with that because I was in a military intelligence role during my service and dealt with exactly those kinds of classified briefings and training reels; mine were sonar illusions, but this was for pilots).

It’s expected, and we have backing testimony, that the better videos remain classified.

No, we do not. There is no confirmation of “better” videos from anyone who would actually know. Nor could there be, because we know what made these videos, and thus we already know those instruments do not have relevantly better resolution than what we have.

It’s been speculated that the technology of the ship could affect light, making them hard to see/record.

There is no relevant way that can be even remotely probable for the purpose. And if you have to assume something extremely improbable, your theory is simply extremely improbable.

In reality, these are all 100% expected effects of the known causes. So for aliens to exactly spoof our systems so as to look exactly like known phenomena would be an extraordinary coincidence, positing motives and technologies not at all in evidence and nowhere near as probable as what we already know they are.

By analogy, to claim that aliens exist because trees exist, and “you can’t rule out” that trees are aliens because the aliens just disguise themselves perfectly as trees, “therefore aliens exist” is obviously catastrophically awful reasoning. You can do better.

“it’s just the heat exhaust of an ordinary jet aircraft…” We don’t know that.

Yes, we do. That’s exactly what that looks like. It explains every feature (right down to the construction of the camera). And it was even optically reproduced to prove it. So there is nothing left to explain.

Also, we have the testimony about the associated radar data about the thing reversing and being escorted by multiple objects.

That’s not true. You have confused different stories from different sources.

The object you are referring to was beyond human visual range, captured only by telescopic camera. So, obviously, that associated pilot cannot have seen what you claim.

If you want to zero in on one of the other claims by different pilots, provide the primary source material here so I can check which one you are talking about and its context. But they won’t relate to that video.

If I remember correctly, the WSO that recorded it (Underwood) said that the thing did move too fast for him to follow it.

Underwood never saw the object. He only tried tracking it on sensors. Everything he says about what happened was him chasing sensor ghosts. I already explain how he got confused.

Your take on Fravor seeing a cloud I find almost offensive.

Emotional dislike of a cause does not have any bearing on its probability. That pilots make serious errors is a reality. That false memory syndrome is common is a reality. That thought contagion is well documented is a reality. These things cannot be dismissed because it is “offensive” to admit that they happen.

The unrelated frothing water apparently below the single oval cloud

This would be precisely the coincidence that triggered his pareidolia and thus trapped him in a disillusioned perception of what was happening (exactly as happened to me with the silver airplane, and again with the seagulls, which is clearly what happened to Arnold).

in the same region the radar detected it

The object was never visible to radar. As I explain in the article you evidently didn’t read above, the visual encounter was uncorroborated by any radar data. The tic-tac video (which was long-range infrared, not radar) was a different place and time on the same week. And the radar ghosts were a problem inherent in the new system they were testing and ongoing the whole week. The assumption that any of these were related was a post hoc error of association.

then Underwood finding another completely unrelated oval thing (not a cloud this time)

I’m not sure what this is referring to. Underwood took the long-range infrared video (the “tic-tac”) on a different day and place. It did not have the dimensions of the white object and is obviously a distant aircraft. The white cloud encounter was in a different place and time. But that it was during the same week-long operation in the same area is indeed part of what caused his perceptual assumptions to go awry.

the crew seeing unrelated oval things with the binoculars from the ship

Again you are confusing different things.

At a completely different time and day, when the radar was glitching, PO Gary Voorhis used “long range” binoculars (which are highly prone to distortion at sea) and saw distant vague erratic lights in the sky several days and nights in the general direction of the radar ghosts but he never confirmed any actual correlation (heading, speed, deltas, or range) and so was, again, engaging in a correlation fallacy. His description of the distant erratic lights is too vague and confused to draw any conclusions from.

Even though it was bouncing around “like a ping-pong ball in a glass” and ended up disappearing in the distance in seconds

You’re repeating the output of an internet telephone game: Fravor said “a ping pong ball bouncing off a wall” not “around in a glass.” He means that he thought it changed direction quickly and moved fast. But more likely, he was confused about who was moving, and in what way. The cognitive error then caused a misinterpretation of what he saw. As I explain. He had the wrong distance for the object, and this led him to misperceive everything about it (where it was going, how fast it was moving).

One also needs to account for memory contamination. As Fravor goes on in time, I see he adds more things to what he remembers happening, based on his assumptions about what happened. I already discuss this problem in the article. It’s exactly the same thing that happened to Arnold, whose story changed over time to be more in line with his misinterpretation, whereas his earliest versions correspond too aptly to birds to be a coincidence. But all along, his original mistake (getting wrong how far away they were) caused him to believe all sorts of mistaken things about how large they are and how fast they were moving (and that they were “spinning” and so on; all optical illusions of the exact same kind I experienced).

“when that list’s all-sum probability exceeds “aliens,” you know it’s probably not aliens”

We don’t know the probability of “aliens” (or better, NHI), though. What confidence could you really have on your priors when you don’t really know much? That said, I agree it’s probably not aliens. But that’s not enough. Unlikely things still can happen, and this possibility has such potential for disruption that, I think, we need to make the effort to actually resolve the cases and not settle with “it’s probably not”.

“That “UFOs” always only ever show up in ambiguous footage…”

The turkish UFO (Kumburgaz) is pretty clear, for example. Or the lake Cote one.
A couple more points:
– We are only seeing the videos the military release. It’s expected, and we have backing testimony, that the better videos remain classified.
– Or leaked, low quality versions of videos; like recordings of a screen reproducing a video.
– Or captured by civilians with shitty equipment. This things are unexpected, fast, far away, etc.
– It’s been speculated that the technology of the ship could affect light, making them hard to see/record. Quite convenient, but can’t discard it.

“it’s just the heat exhaust of an ordinary jet aircraft…”

Your confidence is not justified, imo. We don’t know that. I agree on the glare and the rotation, but asserting just like that that it’s a jet when we only see a blob…
Also, we have the testimony about the associated radar data about the thing reversing and being escorted by multiple objects.

“That “UFO” does not actually “zip away” at an incredible speed…”

If I remember correctly, the WSO that recorded it (Underwood) said that the thing did move too fast for him to follow it.

Your take on Fravor seeing a cloud I find almost offensive. I think you are appealing to a lot of convenient coincidences: the unrelated frothing water apparently below the single oval cloud, in the same region the radar detected it; then Underwood finding another completely unrelated oval thing (not a cloud this time); the crew seeing unrelated oval things with the binoculars from the ship; Fravor and Dietrich not realizing, after engaging, that it was a cloud, even though it was bouncing around “like a ping-pong ball in a glass” and ended up disappearing in the distance in seconds…

I’m not sure as to your point. All sides agree there statistically are certain to be (or have been) alien civilizations. That is not the question faced here.

The question faced here is whether we have any evidence of their having visited here (past or present). The priors are low; e.g. even your teleportation scenario entails extreme improbabilities as to the technology alone, much less the ability and interest for aliens to know we even exist here and visit, despite the difficulties created by lightspeed and relativity in even making it possible to know we are here, much less get here in mere centuries rather than thousands or millions of years after visible data on our existence is received. And the likelihoods are poor; e.g. all evidence presented so far is far more probable on other explanations than this.

But since you introduced a new question: the teleportation you talk about cannot help aliens.

(1) Our teletech requires us to have already beach-headed the destination (the target satellite has to be sent to the destination already kitted to receive). We cannot circularly teleport the receiver tech to its location in order to teleport to its location. All plausible teletech requires this step. So aliens would still have to fly something out here the usual way, before they could teleport to it.

This limitation is correctly illustrated in the novel and film Contact. In that story, the aliens did it the already fastest way possible: they sent us the information to build the teleporter linkup ourselves. That still required them to have a signal station already physically built about fifty lightyears away, and it took those fifty years for their signal to reach us.

(2) Even quantum teleportation is limited by lightspeed. Although quantum entanglement can collapse instantaneously (at least theoretically), coordinated collapse (as would be needed for coherent teleportation of entire structures, like a person, or even a coherent set of instructions) requires a coordinating signal, and the only one available is light. So the speed of teleportation is still limited to lightspeed. So aliens thousands of lightyears away will still have to take thousands of years to get a coordinating teleportation signal here (and again, there still has to be a receiver station here ready to go before that would even be possible).

I think that was a coincidence. The image looked like a gimbal, and it was so-named. I don’t think it was intentionally named after the mechanical cause of the illusion. Likewise a “go fast” is a pilot term for any engine that produces high speed (e.g. an afterburner on a fighter is a “go fast” as can be called the fighter it propels). But yes, that there really is only one source for all this, and it wasn’t official (it was only officially acknowledged authentic after it was out, but no other details were officially acknowledged), is a red flag to keep an eye on. They have been able to control and frame the narrative, which has simply become baked-in to how everyone talks about these things, which is a classic case of memory contamination: people are seeing what they have been told to see, rather than looking at the images with uninfluenced minds.

The fact that such a small, interconnected cabal of folks are responsible for virtually the recent “disclosures” is super suspicious in my mind.