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Another tricky by-election defence for the Tories – politicalbetting.com

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  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,468
    dixiedean said:

    IanB2 said:

    I see that there are now suggestions that there’s a super-injunction out regarding the lying clown’s honours list?

    So, please, no questions about any young seemingly unqualified people who are about to make it into the House of Lords.

    An attractive young blonde employed on maternity cover gets a seat in the House of Lords?
    What could that super injunction possibly be about?
    Who knows? The peerage for Ross Kempsell shows you don't have to be a fruity blonde to be given a life peerage by Bozza.

    The central mystery pesists, though. If Ross Kempsell and Charlotte Owen are really such brilliant young talents, why dump them in the House of Hasbeens before they have the chance to change the world in their own right? If they're that good, they ought to be parachuted into safe seats in the Commons.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606

    Re; the ufo whistleblower, he's not mad.

    He's also in the middle of a very long bureaucratic process with the US inspectorate of intelligence, as I've mentioned more than a few times, and his current lawyer was also inspector-general before that. It might not be the complete story, it may be partially right, or it may be completely wrong, but I would keep an eye on this story, contrary to the beffudlement and/or mockery surrounding it from the major news organisations.


    I agree. He doesn’t seem remotely mad. Possibly being manipulated by super intelligent overseers? Maybe. But how do they do that? With special drugs? He doesn’t look delusional

    His evidence is, prima facie, inexplicable. It’s too outrageous to be true but all the explanations for his testimony being a pack of lies don’t quite add up
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,591
    I mean, I'm sure she believes that and I happen to think the chances of her being charged are pretty low, but isn't this basically what any politician says anytime they are accused, even when caught dead to rights?

    Nicola Sturgeon has said she is certain she has done nothing wrong after appearing in public for the first time since her arrest last Sunday.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-65942728
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    Another journalist on a serious paper says Stop Laughing about Aliens


    “It is easy to dismiss these claims as fantasy or fabrication, but maybe it’s time the world took the issue seriously”

    https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3224288/us-whistle-blower-raises-ufo-question-perhaps-its-time-world-looked-answers
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 52,149
    edited June 2023
    "Depeche Mode review – who knew synth-pop could be this colossal and life-affirming?"

    https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jun/18/depeche-mode-review-twickenham-stadium-london?fbclid=IwAR0A59robjRr0iVgFyEeq-AHmVT27gbQZZngvyIgdH16iI8C2fsNT7pGxGc

    Yours truly was there last night, BTW!
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 5,067

    FF43 said:

    ..

    Farooq said:

    TimS said:

    kle4 said:

    Farooq said:

    Foxy said:

    darkage said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Sean_F said:

    Scott_xP said:

    I went for a pint in Brexit Central and everybody’s rather bitter

    A wish for sovereignty drove voters in Clacton-on-Sea to Leave. But optimism has given way to anger

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/i-went-for-a-pint-in-brexit-central-and-everybodys-rather-bitter-mmbnccpcs

    Brexit is a racist endeavour.

    In the Moon and Starfish, a Wetherspoon’s pub on the Clacton seafront, the day drinking crowd were well into their third pints by Thursday lunchtime. When I brought up Brexit, it was viewed with a sense of wasted opportunity, like a football team who had thrown away a two-goal lead.

    “I expected problems from day one. It’s the British way,” said Trevor, 77, a retired commodities trader. “I hoped it would be good, but it hasn’t panned out; the politicians have let us down as usual. Boris is an arsehole. He’s always been an arsehole.”

    “Independence” and “standing on our own two feet” were the most common rationales I heard for Brexit, but, like many in Clacton, Trevor had also hoped that leaving the EU would allow the government to drastically reduce immigration. Clearly, this hasn’t happened. “We need to stop the boats — this country is full,” he said. Then he looked at me. “I’m not being rude to you, but it’s to stop the n*****s coming in.” Right then.
    I hear similar all the time from people of that generation. I’m not racist but….. type stuff. From the Boomer generation who grew up in a white country.

    The question is how different are the Gen Xers and Millennials who have grown up in an increasingly multicultural society? Much more tolerant in the main? If Brexit was primarily about enabling a dying generation to express its racism, then it’s unsustainable.
    One of the things that struck me about the Yorkshire Cricket Club racism scandal is that those involved were considerably younger than me. Ditto police officers who get caught up in such scandals.

    I’m Gen X.
    Anyone thinking that the young are somehow free of prejudice needs to get out into the real world. Look at the misogyny, racism and homophobia we have seen described in many institutions and the people exhibiting these - many of them young. These prejudices just take different forms and get packaged differently. Sexism towards women is quite shocking and often comes from young men against women of all ages, for instance. There are also some pretty unpleasant descriptions of old people by the young - sometimes on this forum.
    Your general point is true, and you can get some strong sexism from a 20 year old bro who knows all the right terms and forms to present as being free from prejudice.

    But I am interested in what you consider over the line in terms of prejudice against the old. Is someone railing against the government reliant on and thus wholly focused on the needs of retirees over the line? Is someone blaming that cohorts priorities on housing or immigration over the line, wrong, or just exaggerating? Is all that fine so long as bad words are not used?
    The idea that prejudice can be removed from the human experience is one that I find absolutely deranged and comical, but this is consistent with a long history of progressive ideas. In the end all these projects end in tragedy and failure.

    I've mentioned the initiative below a few times, 'prejudice reporting in education', an example of the phenomenon I am raising.


    https://www.prfe.education/

    Indeed. I think the sane view is that *something approaching* an unbiased view of people can only be achieved through continuous self examination.

    Anyone who says “I can’t be biased, I am X/a member of Y” can be presumed to be biased.
    We all have prejudices, and it it examination and acknowledgement of these that allows us to overcome them.

    It needs to be in a supportive culture though, not Maoist Cultural Revolution style self criticism.
    Sadly, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
    Some people react with horrified fury at the idea of unconscious bias and if they can be persuaded to take those little tests that purport to identify them, reject them wholeheartedly.

    The issue, I think, is the stigma admitting bias. But if we can get past that and be comfortable with seeing our own biases, it's not the end of the world and it can save us from making embarrassing mistakes.

    One of my biases is around around gender. I suspect it's very common. If I hear certain genderless job names, like "doctor" or "nurse", I have a tendency to picture one gender or the other. Now that I know I do this, I can consciously remember not to carry that assumption forward into saying something stupid. (Of course, I still say many other stupid things).

    I don't blame myself for having those early-learned gendered ideas, and I don't think anyone else should either. But a lot of people are terrified of being seen as having biases and so will avoid doing something about them.
    I think unconscious bias is definitely a thing, as you say it might be around instinctively picturing something, and you probably would not act any differently were that instinct incorrect.

    I do think that the impact of it can be vastly overstated, and there have been some comical examples of advice and training on the subject which seems to me to be likely to have the opposite effect - like the one about not making enough eye contact with some people, which seemed likely to result in people making too much eye contact at people of a specific race, etc, in an effort to overcome it.

    I do think microaggressions are utter bullshit though- far too open to abuse to condemn people for something both slight and unintentional (if even real), and to make people hyper aware and sensitive to see slights where there are none.
    This is where nuance is important. Micro aggressions cross a wide spectrum. There’s a big difference between “so you’re Italian, bet you get cross when people put pineapple on pizza” and “calm down dear” or “let me feel your fuzzy hair”.

    I had a someone at work complain to me that a senior colleague had described him (a Mexican) as South American. On the basis this level of geographical ignorance was borderline racist. I couldn’t get excited by that when most Americans think we live in a country called England and half the world thinks it’s always foggy in London.
    I eat pineapple on pizza and if some Italian tries to stop me you won't see a microaggression from me, I will make war on the whole country. Tanks on the Piazza di Siena. Internment camps, war crimes THE WORKS.
    I had pizza with pineapple in Pisa. And very nice it was too.

    Pizza condemnation should be reserved for those where the base is several inches thick and resembles a stottie cake.
    If you have a piece a pizza in Pisa, you have no reason to expect authenticity. Everyone knows pizza is an American invention and the pineapple version is Canadian. Possibly the only Canadian national dish.
    Poutine
    That's what the French call Putin
    Should be what they call Trump. Both are orange and greasy.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,175
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2023_Spanish_general_election

    Six new polls this weekend all showing no real change in voting patterns since the election was called. PP/VOX remain the only combination likely to get an absolute majority. Five weeks until the vote with postals a week or so less. Likely to be a lot of these given the election timing.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,477
    edited June 2023

    dixiedean said:

    IanB2 said:

    I see that there are now suggestions that there’s a super-injunction out regarding the lying clown’s honours list?

    So, please, no questions about any young seemingly unqualified people who are about to make it into the House of Lords.

    An attractive young blonde employed on maternity cover gets a seat in the House of Lords?
    What could that super injunction possibly be about?
    Who knows? The peerage for Ross Kempsell shows you don't have to be a fruity blonde to be given a life peerage by Bozza.

    The central mystery pesists, though. If Ross Kempsell and Charlotte Owen are really such brilliant young talents, why dump them in the House of Hasbeens before they have the chance to change the world in their own right? If they're that good, they ought to be parachuted into safe seats in the Commons.
    Mystery?
    Occam's razor suggests they aren't brilliant.
    But are owed something by someone.
    We can guess who easily.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,263

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 52,149
    kle4 said:

    I mean, I'm sure she believes that and I happen to think the chances of her being charged are pretty low, but isn't this basically what any politician says anytime they are accused, even when caught dead to rights?

    Nicola Sturgeon has said she is certain she has done nothing wrong after appearing in public for the first time since her arrest last Sunday.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-65942728

    Are you Johnson in disguise?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,263
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,260
    edited June 2023
    Indeed, if you look at Grush, or Greer's press conference last week which I linked to below, for instance, nearly all these people are military or intelligence insiders.

    The vast majority of the most hysterical anti-vaxxers were not insiders, but some of the more liberal media are also skipping this story because of its popularity on the more populist right who were also susceptible to anti-vax conspiracy thinking, which for me would clearly be another inadvisedly prejudicial route to go down, I think.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    edited June 2023
    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 55,035
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    So, if the US Military Establishment now want you to think it’s all aliens, what current projects are they trying to hide?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,504
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    But Barack Obama doesn’t need “more attention” and “extra hits on his YouTube vids” and he has also said “there is stuff up there we do not understand”

    Same goes for multiple admirals, spies, generals, senators, ex CIA chiefs - all saying the same thing

    So your explanation doesn’t work, overall. It may explain a modest percentage of the phenomenon, no more

    And that’s the crazy thing. How do you explain ALL of it?
    Do you have a link to what Obama said, and its context please?

    But from your report of it: yes, there is plenty of stuff up there we don't understand, and we're learning more all the time. Many decades back, high-altitude pilots and (I believe) astronauts reported seeing red glows in the sky. Many sightings were not reported, because they didn't want to be known as 'seeing things'. The phenomenon is now well-recorded, although still little-understood. Because they are often associated with thunderstorms, it's easy to categorise them as such. And there are many other similar phenomena.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(lightning)

    Ball lightning is another example of a phenomenon that has been seen too many times to be disregarded, yet I do not believe it has ever been caught on camera, or explained. But it ain't aliens.

    Or will-o'-the-wisp; which was routinely believed to be connected with fairies or ghosts. But oddly, not aliens. Perhaps because the alien craze only started in the last century or so.

    People like to put simple answers on things. "It wuz aliens" is a simplistic, quasi-religious form of explanation.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,263
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    The fact that silicon chips work, to take a simple example.

    Thus far the UFO stuff isn't in the same category. I'm happy to accept there's stuff I can't explain; this isn't yet even 'stuff'.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,983
    Reading all the stuff about Govey this morning got me wondering why he and Sarah Vine decided to call it a day. If ever a union seemed made in heaven this was it. Could two more unpleasant people have ever tied the knot.

    Google directed me to The Tattler which went behind a paywall as soon as it got interesting so I picked up the story which had been ripped off by The Sun.......

    "Michael Gove's divorce to Sarah Vine confirmed as she blames BREXIT for marriage split"

    ......They lost their friends thanks to it "My whole life fell away....."

    ......and that's where it ends.

    So it wasn't just everyone else's life they ruined. Well that's comforting
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 52,149
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    If "they" exist, and are "here", then surely there'd be an Alien or two posting on PB?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,772
    Roger said:

    Reading all the stuff about Govey this morning got me wondering why he and Sarah Vine decided to call it a day. If ever a union seemed made in heaven this was it. Could two more unpleasant people have ever tied the knot.

    Google directed me to The Tattler which went behind a paywall as soon as it got interesting so I picked up the story which had been ripped off by The Sun.......

    "Michael Gove's divorce to Sarah Vine confirmed as she blames BREXIT for marriage split"

    ......They lost their friends thanks to it "My whole life fell away....."

    ......and that's where it ends.

    So it wasn't just everyone else's life they ruined. Well that's comforting

    How good of God to make Thomas and Jane Carlyle marry each other, and so make only two people miserable instead of four.

    Samuel Butler.
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,069
    edited June 2023

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    If "they" exist, and are "here", then surely there'd be an Alien or two posting on PB?
    Look at my avatar...

    (And kle4, so there's your two)
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,468
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,260
    edited June 2023
    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    So, if the US Military Establishment now want you to think it’s all aliens, what current projects are they trying to hide?
    That's partly what's so interesting. It's quite possible to have unaccountable projects, blocked off by decades of large legal restrictions on speaking out, without any large conspiracy.

    This could be extra-terrestrial, intra-terrrestrial, or made of blue and green cheeseas, as far as I'm concerned, but Einsenhower was right to say, that from his direct experience, one should axiomatically always be extremely wary of any commercial and government interests that link lucrative military and industrial concerns.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    So, if the US Military Establishment now want you to think it’s all aliens, what current projects are they trying to hide?
    That’s certainly one explanation. It must be some pretty major tech for them to go to such lengths to hide it. Zero gravity flight? But then where is it? Why haven’t they used it?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,509
    ydoethur said:

    Malc, has it been a bad year for turnips? You've been getting really mad at everyone and not threatened to throw a single one.

    ydoethur, I am mad at only one person on here and if I could he would have several turnips inserted in every orifice and a few he did not realise he had.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,416
    Taz said:

    viewcode said:

    Taz said:

    Farooq said:

    DougSeal said:

    Who is Plato?

    Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, the teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence. What are they teaching people these days?
    I studied Philosophy for two years.
    And you Kant remember who Plato was?
    He never said he passed !!

    That’s a gag from Dr Who, in case anyone thinks it’s a dog as I like CHB
    Pause

    Pause

    DAMMIT!

    OK, which episode? It sounds like Adams/Baker era.
    Terror of the Autons part 1, Jo Grant says it to the Doctor. It was an A level in General science.

    Obviously I had to change gender for CHB 👍
    Damn, I should have worked that out for myself... :( Thank you.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,504
    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,478

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    If "they" exist, and are "here", then surely there'd be an Alien or two posting on PB?
    Good afternoon.
    (Al = Alien).
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 43,395
    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    The fact that silicon chips work, to take a simple example.

    Thus far the UFO stuff isn't in the same category. I'm happy to accept there's stuff I can't explain; this isn't yet even 'stuff'.
    Also, why a light bulb doesn't explode in a bunch of hard X-rays when you switch it on (vide Ultraviolet Catastrophe). And lots of modern chemistry, indeed perhaps all of it.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
  • On first innings declarations: imagine if a team won the Ashes without being bowled out
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 49,145
    ydoethur said:

    Roger said:

    Reading all the stuff about Govey this morning got me wondering why he and Sarah Vine decided to call it a day. If ever a union seemed made in heaven this was it. Could two more unpleasant people have ever tied the knot.

    Google directed me to The Tattler which went behind a paywall as soon as it got interesting so I picked up the story which had been ripped off by The Sun.......

    "Michael Gove's divorce to Sarah Vine confirmed as she blames BREXIT for marriage split"

    ......They lost their friends thanks to it "My whole life fell away....."

    ......and that's where it ends.

    So it wasn't just everyone else's life they ruined. Well that's comforting

    How good of God to make Thomas and Jane Carlyle marry each other, and so make only two people miserable instead of four.

    Samuel Butler.
    My mother has a similar ascerbic Lancashire saying "They make a perfect couple - they don't spoil another one"
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 52,149

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    If "they" exist, and are "here", then surely there'd be an Alien or two posting on PB?
    Good afternoon.
    (Al = Alien).
    I thought you were merely a Northern_A.I.!

    Didn't realise it was an "L". :lol:
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 43,395
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    There is s difference between seeing how it works out and why it works. You were denying its very existence. Yet IO demonstrate its existence every time I switch on the light bulb.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541
    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    Malc, has it been a bad year for turnips? You've been getting really mad at everyone and not threatened to throw a single one.

    ydoethur, I am mad at only one person on here and if I could he would have several turnips inserted in every orifice and a few he did not realise he had.
    I am fully aware if your position regarding my good self Malc. I too will one day shuffle off this mortal coil. I hope it makes you feel better.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 51,153
    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    The fact that silicon chips work, to take a simple example.

    Thus far the UFO stuff isn't in the same category. I'm happy to accept there's stuff I can't explain; this isn't yet even 'stuff'.
    Also, why a light bulb doesn't explode in a bunch of hard X-rays when you switch it on (vide Ultraviolet Catastrophe). And lots of modern chemistry, indeed perhaps all of it.
    The various models of the universe, Newton, Relativity etc can be seen through a simple telescope. As each is applied, you can predict various movements of the planets more and more accurately.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,509

    Dura_Ace said:

    ..

    Dura_Ace said:

    Who is Plato?

    Weird woman on here who went full MAGA shitbird then died.
    Before that she was "Poster of the Year".
    Certainy not something that would ever be awarded to Dura Ace if it was still in existence.
    I’m pretty much 99.9% sure he would spit in the eye of anyone who said he should be awarded it.
    If I ever thought my antinomianistic contributions were considered sufficiently worthy by the bourgeois knicker shitters on here to trouble the PotY selection committee I would never post again.
    You suffer from a breakdown in the balance of your control and release mechanisms and from the permeability of your body boundaries
    Can we have that in English please
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    The quantum physics/cosmological comparison actually illuminates this debate


    If a guy from MIT or Imperial in a white coat comes out and says “we believe there is an infinite number of parallel universes” we all nod and say OK, yep, fair enough - even though this is an absolutely outlandish claim and there is zero “hard evidence” and the implications are entirely mind boggling

    Such is the prestige of science

    If a large number of politicians, presidents, spies, journalists, intelligence experts, astronauts, airline pilots, admirals, generals, navy airmen etc etc all come out and say “there is evidence of non human intelligence in our skies” we all laugh and say No way even though this is a much less outrageous claim

    Such is the successful stigmatisation of anything “UFO”
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,260
    edited June 2023

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    There is s difference between seeing how it works out and why it works. You were denying its very existence. Yet IO demonstrate its existence every time I switch on the light bulb.
    I didn’t deny its existence at all. I was making the point that we accept it is real because the scientists tell us it is real, despite it being very hard to understand even for expert physicists. As per the quotes adduced. Do keep up
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,106
    Leon said:

    If a large number of politicians, presidents, spies, journalists, intelligence experts, astronauts, airline pilots, admirals, generals, navy airmen etc etc all come out and say “there is evidence of non human intelligence in our skies” we all laugh and say No way even though this is a much less outrageous claim

    Such is the successful stigmatisation of anything “UFO”

    If that were true, and I am not sure it is, it is only because "a large number of politicians, presidents, spies, journalists, intelligence experts, astronauts, airline pilots, admirals, generals, navy airmen etc etc" came out and said “there is no evidence of non human intelligence in our skies”
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that its the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is still doing some of the oddest stuff, ofcourse ; that would partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again this work could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    I’m also not sure it’s true any more that this is restricted to the anglophone world. That could be a reporting bias. We hear of more stories from the anglophone world because English is the world language and stories in English get more exposure. Also we can’t be bothered with stories not in English

    A quick Twitter search shows lots of videos and reports from the non English speaking world
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    Scott_xP said:

    Leon said:

    If a large number of politicians, presidents, spies, journalists, intelligence experts, astronauts, airline pilots, admirals, generals, navy airmen etc etc all come out and say “there is evidence of non human intelligence in our skies” we all laugh and say No way even though this is a much less outrageous claim

    Such is the successful stigmatisation of anything “UFO”

    If that were true, and I am not sure it is, it is only because "a large number of politicians, presidents, spies, journalists, intelligence experts, astronauts, airline pilots, admirals, generals, navy airmen etc etc" came out and said “there is no evidence of non human intelligence in our skies”
    The only recent US President to have flatly denied the UFO angle is Donald Trump. Of the others they have either kept quiet - Biden - dropped definite hints - Obama - or been active believers - Carter
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,685
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Recquantum physics you are wrong. We have multiple lines of evidence. I use quantum mechanical effects every day at work. Your computer uses it.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,504

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,416
    edited June 2023
    This week's Perun is up:
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,478
    Meanwhile, I stand by my belief that it was a huge error for England to declare on Friday, as they may well need the extra runs they could have scored.
    England 27-2.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,223

    Meanwhile, I stand by my belief that it was a huge error for England to declare on Friday, as they may well need the extra runs they could have scored.
    England 27-2.

    All about eliminating the draw, innit? :neutral:
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,685
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Pathetic response. You just don’t like being schooled by people who know more about things than your 5 minutes on twitter gives you.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,260
    edited June 2023

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
    Just as I don't think there's any way to know for sure as yet, I don't think there's any grounds to discount it out of hand, either.

    As much as there can be hysterical confirmation bias in favour of things of people have seen in popular culture, there can also be another kind of confirmation bias that humans have suffered from millennia; anything outside the parameters of current understanding is axiomatically mad, laughable or dangerous. This is partly because anything challenging basic precepts of current physical understanding also has the capacity to jolt all sorts of other social and intellectual precepts across the board, and so presents a threat to existing societies and socio-political orders.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 55,035
    Big cheer in the ground, for that waste of a review!
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,504

    Meanwhile, I stand by my belief that it was a huge error for England to declare on Friday, as they may well need the extra runs they could have scored.
    England 27-2.

    The only thing that could make a cricket match in any way interesting is if a Chesterfield sofa appears - and then disappears - from the ground.

    "For those of you who've just tuned in, you may be interested to know that, er ... two men, two rather scruffily attired men, and indeed a sofa — a Chesterfield I think?"

    "Yes, a Chesterfield."

    "Have just materialized here in the middle of Lord's Cricket Ground. But I don't think they meant any harm, they've been very good-natured about it, and ..."

    "Sorry, can I interrupt you a moment Peter and say that the sofa has just vanished."

    "So it has. Well, that's one mystery less. Still, it's definitely one for the record books I think, particularly occurring at this dramatic moment in play, England now needing only twenty-four runs to win the series. The men are leaving the pitch in the company of a police officer, and I think everyone's settling down now and play is about to resume.""
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,685
    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    There is s difference between seeing how it works out and why it works. You were denying its very existence. Yet IO demonstrate its existence every time I switch on the light bulb.
    I didn’t deny its existence at all. I was making the point that we accept it is real because the scientists tell us it is real, despite it being very hard to understand even for expert physicists. As per the quotes adduced. Do keep up
    That’s not why we accept it. We accept the evidence of things working because of it. Big difference. My NMR doesn’t work because a guy at MIT says it should…
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,772

    Meanwhile, I stand by my belief that it was a huge error for England to declare on Friday, as they may well need the extra runs they could have scored.
    England 27-2.

    They are a bit unlucky that right now the conditions are bad for batting, and if what I can see over Birmingham from my windows is anything to go by, are about to get worse.

    But, they have made a rod for their own backs. Several dropped catches and some needlessly reckless shots.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Pathetic response. You just don’t like being schooled by people who know more about things than your 5 minutes on twitter gives you.
    Lol

    “If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it”

    JOHN WHEELER

    “If quantum mechanics is correct, it signifies the end of physics as a science”

    ALBERT EINSTEIN

  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,685
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Pathetic response. You just don’t like being schooled by people who know more about things than your 5 minutes on twitter gives you.
    Lol

    “If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it”

    JOHN WHEELER

    “If quantum mechanics is correct, it signifies the end of physics as a science”

    ALBERT EINSTEIN

    We understand enough about how QM works to use it everyday life. Understanding the rules behind it is something we don’t really do yet, and may never do. I don’t know why a proton has a spin of 1/2 and can has two spin states in a magnetic field. But I know we can use it to do really cool stuff.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Pathetic response. You just don’t like being schooled by people who know more about things than your 5 minutes on twitter gives you.
    Lol

    “If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it”

    JOHN WHEELER

    “If quantum mechanics is correct, it signifies the end of physics as a science”

    ALBERT EINSTEIN

    We understand enough about how QM works to use it everyday life. Understanding the rules behind it is something we don’t really do yet, and may never do. I don’t know why a proton has a spin of 1/2 and can has two spin states in a magnetic field. But I know we can use it to do really cool stuff.
    It took me a year to teach you how it probably came from the lab. It’s not surprising you don’t understand a fucking proton
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 51,153

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
    Just as I don't think there's any way to know for sure as yet, I don't think there's any grounds to discount it out of hand, either.

    As much as there can be hysterical confirmation bias in favour of things of people have seen in popular culture, there can also be another kind of confirmation bias that humans have suffered from millennia; anything outside the parameters of current understanding is axiomatically mad, laughable or dangerous. This is partly because anything challenging basic precepts of current physical understanding also has the capacity to jolt all sorts of other social and intellectual precepts across the board, and so presents a threat to existing societies and socio-political orders.
    On the Alien visitors thing.

    In the 19th cent. mysterious balloons, often crewed by weird, slightly non humans were frequently reported. Where have they gone? Or did the Aliens upgraded their technology?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 43,395

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Pathetic response. You just don’t like being schooled by people who know more about things than your 5 minutes on twitter gives you.
    Lol

    “If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it”

    JOHN WHEELER

    “If quantum mechanics is correct, it signifies the end of physics as a science”

    ALBERT EINSTEIN

    We understand enough about how QM works to use it everyday life. Understanding the rules behind it is something we don’t really do yet, and may never do. I don’t know why a proton has a spin of 1/2 and can has two spin states in a magnetic field. But I know we can use it to do really cool stuff.
    For that matter we don't really know why e exp(iφ) = cos φ + i sin φ , or 1 plus 1 equals 2, but ...
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,223
    I reckon that's that for the day. England will need to bat well tomorrow.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
    Just as I don't think there's any way to know for sure as yet, I don't think there's any grounds to discount it out of hand, either.

    As much as there can be hysterical confirmation bias in favour of things of people have seen in popular culture, there can also be another kind of confirmation bias that humans have suffered from millennia; anything outside the parameters of current understanding is axiomatically mad, laughable or dangerous. This is partly because anything challenging basic precepts of current physical understanding also has the capacity to jolt all sorts of other social and intellectual precepts across the board, and so presents a threat to existing societies and socio-political orders.
    Indeed

    See Galileo V The Church
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,468
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Your choice. After all, as I've alluded to before, I just make a living teaching people this stuff.

    And yes, if you're looking for a meaning in the symbols, you're going to have a struggle. If you're asking why it works that way, I don't think anyone has that good an answer. But that's not what you said to start with;

    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it...

    And the fact is that you can see it fairly easily if you look in the right place.

    (As for the quotes, I used to start QM lessons with a selection of them- my favourite is Erwin Schrödinger — I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it. But most came from the early days, when there was still hope for a deep meaning to go with an accurate description of what happens. Nowadays, the attitute among physicists tends to be characterised more as David Mermin's Shut up and calculate.)
  • WestieWestie Posts: 426
    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    You sound so pious. How many medics lost money out of backing SARSCov2 vaccination?

    Or out of lockdown for that matter, even if most of them privately said it was c*ck.
  • logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,932
    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Leon said:

    If a large number of politicians, presidents, spies, journalists, intelligence experts, astronauts, airline pilots, admirals, generals, navy airmen etc etc all come out and say “there is evidence of non human intelligence in our skies” we all laugh and say No way even though this is a much less outrageous claim

    Such is the successful stigmatisation of anything “UFO”

    If that were true, and I am not sure it is, it is only because "a large number of politicians, presidents, spies, journalists, intelligence experts, astronauts, airline pilots, admirals, generals, navy airmen etc etc" came out and said “there is no evidence of non human intelligence in our skies”
    The only recent US President to have flatly denied the UFO angle is Donald Trump. Of the others they have either kept quiet - Biden - dropped definite hints - Obama - or been active believers - Carter
    It's useful to have a few believers in UFOs - it's aliens not a new flying gizmo from the skunk works.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,685
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Pathetic response. You just don’t like being schooled by people who know more about things than your 5 minutes on twitter gives you.
    Lol

    “If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it”

    JOHN WHEELER

    “If quantum mechanics is correct, it signifies the end of physics as a science”

    ALBERT EINSTEIN

    We understand enough about how QM works to use it everyday life. Understanding the rules behind it is something we don’t really do yet, and may never do. I don’t know why a proton has a spin of 1/2 and can has two spin states in a magnetic field. But I know we can use it to do really cool stuff.
    It took me a year to teach you how it probably came from the lab. It’s not surprising you don’t understand a fucking proton
    Well can you get cracking on how NMR works for me please?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 51,153
    Leon said:

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
    Just as I don't think there's any way to know for sure as yet, I don't think there's any grounds to discount it out of hand, either.

    As much as there can be hysterical confirmation bias in favour of things of people have seen in popular culture, there can also be another kind of confirmation bias that humans have suffered from millennia; anything outside the parameters of current understanding is axiomatically mad, laughable or dangerous. This is partly because anything challenging basic precepts of current physical understanding also has the capacity to jolt all sorts of other social and intellectual precepts across the board, and so presents a threat to existing societies and socio-political orders.
    Indeed

    See Galileo V The Church
    Which was more about gratuitously insulting a Renaissance Prince (the Pope)….
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,504

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
    Just as I don't think there's any way to know for sure as yet, I don't think there's any grounds to discount it out of hand.

    As much as there can be hysterical confirmation bias in favour of things of people have seen in popular culture, there can also be another kind of confirmation bias that humans have suffered from millennia; anything outside the parameters of current understanding is axiomatically mad, laughable or dangerous. This is because anything challenging basic precepts of current physical understanding also has the capacity to jolt all sorts of other social and intellectual precepts across the board, and so present a threat to existing societies and politico-social orders.
    No. I'm perfectly open to the existence of odd phenomenon. They're great and interesting, as they can further knowledge and scientific understanding.

    As an example: the orbit of Mercury cannot be predicted by Newtonian physics. This was a big problem, and various problematic solutions were proposed: including an unknown planet called 'Vulcan'. Then Einstein came up with General Relativity, which explained Mercury's orbit perfectly.

    Now, a hidden planet called 'Vulcan' is cool. It's brilliant. It's easy for the layman to understand, and it's exciting: imagine what might be on it! The real answer, general relativity, is complex, difficult to understand and, frankly, unexciting to the layman.

    But if you're talking about aliens travelling vast distances to come to Earth, to remain mostly hidden, to be seen mainly by people in one or two countries, to kidnap and probe people from the American MidWest, and leave *zero* evidence that is conclusively alien:

    Then I'd argue that's like Vulcan. It's lazy thinking. It takes science and knowledge no further. It's like saying a Willo-the-wisp is a fairy.

    The threat to "existing societies and politico-social orders" comes from people looking for lazy answers for complex things. And sadly, politics does try to sell lazy answers to the public far too often.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,820
    Those 30 runs England would have got by no declaring look like being handy now .
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 55,035
    tlg86 said:

    I reckon that's that for the day. England will need to bat well tomorrow.

    Hope it rains for a couple of hours now. England coming back out in these conditions, batting under the lights for an hour at 6pm, could be catastrophic.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,415
    Hindsight shows perhaps Foakes could have replaced Duckett.
  • WestieWestie Posts: 426
    edited June 2023

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Your choice. After all, as I've alluded to before, I just make a living teaching people this stuff.
    They don't pay you to question it then. And if you questioned it while you were teaching it, you might end up like Eric Laithwaite after his 1974 Christmas lecture.

    What neither of you realise is that physics is an intellectual discipline, a set of ideas about reality. Reality is reality. That includes physical reality. The determination of "physics" as a body of ideas separate in certain specific ways from other bodies of ideas is cultural. The same is true of "art", etc.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    edited June 2023

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Your choice. After all, as I've alluded to before, I just make a living teaching people this stuff.

    And yes, if you're looking for a meaning in the symbols, you're going to have a struggle. If you're asking why it works that way, I don't think anyone has that good an answer. But that's not what you said to start with;

    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it...

    And the fact is that you can see it fairly easily if you look in the right place.

    (As for the quotes, I used to start QM lessons with a selection of them- my favourite is Erwin Schrödinger — I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it. But most came from the early days, when there was still hope for a deep meaning to go with an accurate description of what happens. Nowadays, the attitute among physicists tends to be characterised more as David Mermin's Shut up and calculate.)
    QM is a way of perceiving the universe. It is a model. As Newtonian physics was. It will be superseded. They always are. Ask Isaac Newton

    The idea we - this bipedal ape on a little planet, living here in 2023 and eating fried chicken - have now achieved a perfect understanding of the entire multiverse is risible
  • Alphabet_SoupAlphabet_Soup Posts: 3,325

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Your choice. After all, as I've alluded to before, I just make a living teaching people this stuff.

    And yes, if you're looking for a meaning in the symbols, you're going to have a struggle. If you're asking why it works that way, I don't think anyone has that good an answer. But that's not what you said to start with;

    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it...

    And the fact is that you can see it fairly easily if you look in the right place.

    (As for the quotes, I used to start QM lessons with a selection of them- my favourite is Erwin Schrödinger — I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it. But most came from the early days, when there was still hope for a deep meaning to go with an accurate description of what happens. Nowadays, the attitute among physicists tends to be characterised more as David Mermin's Shut up and calculate.)
    Was Schrödinger referring to his cat?
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,947
    80 km cycling today, cooler (30 plus degrees but overcast). Much flatter, but strong head wind. No bars on route as in the middle of nowhere so desperate for food and drink, but found a cherry tree and we stuffed ourselves. Now in lovely country hotel finishing first beer of many.
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,640
    Sandpit said:

    tlg86 said:

    I reckon that's that for the day. England will need to bat well tomorrow.

    Hope it rains for a couple of hours now. England coming back out in these conditions, batting under the lights for an hour at 6pm, could be catastrophic.
    I would be quite happy with no more play today. Better conditions tomorrow, we could be 300 ahead by tea 👍
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    Aqua p.m.

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
    Just as I don't think there's any way to know for sure as yet, I don't think there's any grounds to discount it out of hand.

    As much as there can be hysterical confirmation bias in favour of things of people have seen in popular culture, there can also be another kind of confirmation bias that humans have suffered from millennia; anything outside the parameters of current understanding is axiomatically mad, laughable or dangerous. This is because anything challenging basic precepts of current physical understanding also has the capacity to jolt all sorts of other social and intellectual precepts across the board, and so present a threat to existing societies and politico-social orders.
    No. I'm perfectly open to the existence of odd phenomenon. They're great and interesting, as they can further knowledge and scientific understanding.

    As an example: the orbit of Mercury cannot be predicted by Newtonian physics. This was a big problem, and various problematic solutions were proposed: including an unknown planet called 'Vulcan'. Then Einstein came up with General Relativity, which explained Mercury's orbit perfectly.

    Now, a hidden planet called 'Vulcan' is cool. It's brilliant. It's easy for the layman to understand, and it's exciting: imagine what might be on it! The real answer, general relativity, is complex, difficult to understand and, frankly, unexciting to the layman.

    But if you're talking about aliens travelling vast distances to come to Earth, to remain mostly hidden, to be seen mainly by people in one or two countries, to kidnap and probe people from the American MidWest, and leave *zero* evidence that is conclusively alien:

    Then I'd argue that's like Vulcan. It's lazy thinking. It takes science and knowledge no further. It's like saying a Willo-the-wisp is a fairy.

    The threat to "existing societies and politico-social orders" comes from people looking for lazy answers for complex things. And sadly, politics does try to sell lazy answers to the public far too often.
    If non human intelligence exists and is visiting us - and I am highly skeptical but not entirely dismissive - it is far more likely that we are being visited by AI drones than living organisms (as we understand them) or that - as Grusch alludes - they are from a parallel dimension we cannot generally perceive. Both solutions solve the faster-than-light problem
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    Aliens and cricket. Love it. PB at its best. Not a hint of Boris Johnson

    It’s a beautiful morning in Kentucky and I am off to Lexington to have a last drunken lunch. Later
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,504
    Leon said:

    Aqua p.m.

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
    Just as I don't think there's any way to know for sure as yet, I don't think there's any grounds to discount it out of hand.

    As much as there can be hysterical confirmation bias in favour of things of people have seen in popular culture, there can also be another kind of confirmation bias that humans have suffered from millennia; anything outside the parameters of current understanding is axiomatically mad, laughable or dangerous. This is because anything challenging basic precepts of current physical understanding also has the capacity to jolt all sorts of other social and intellectual precepts across the board, and so present a threat to existing societies and politico-social orders.
    No. I'm perfectly open to the existence of odd phenomenon. They're great and interesting, as they can further knowledge and scientific understanding.

    As an example: the orbit of Mercury cannot be predicted by Newtonian physics. This was a big problem, and various problematic solutions were proposed: including an unknown planet called 'Vulcan'. Then Einstein came up with General Relativity, which explained Mercury's orbit perfectly.

    Now, a hidden planet called 'Vulcan' is cool. It's brilliant. It's easy for the layman to understand, and it's exciting: imagine what might be on it! The real answer, general relativity, is complex, difficult to understand and, frankly, unexciting to the layman.

    But if you're talking about aliens travelling vast distances to come to Earth, to remain mostly hidden, to be seen mainly by people in one or two countries, to kidnap and probe people from the American MidWest, and leave *zero* evidence that is conclusively alien:

    Then I'd argue that's like Vulcan. It's lazy thinking. It takes science and knowledge no further. It's like saying a Willo-the-wisp is a fairy.

    The threat to "existing societies and politico-social orders" comes from people looking for lazy answers for complex things. And sadly, politics does try to sell lazy answers to the public far too often.
    If non human intelligence exists and is visiting us - and I am highly skeptical but not entirely dismissive - it is far more likely that we are being visited by AI drones than living organisms (as we understand them) or that - as Grusch alludes - they are from a parallel dimension we cannot generally perceive. Both solutions solve the faster-than-light problem
    Why do 'AI drones' stop the faster-than-light problem?
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,915
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    There is loads of experimental evidence for quantum physics. I did a few of the experiments in my Physics A-level.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,685
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Your choice. After all, as I've alluded to before, I just make a living teaching people this stuff.

    And yes, if you're looking for a meaning in the symbols, you're going to have a struggle. If you're asking why it works that way, I don't think anyone has that good an answer. But that's not what you said to start with;

    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it...

    And the fact is that you can see it fairly easily if you look in the right place.

    (As for the quotes, I used to start QM lessons with a selection of them- my favourite is Erwin Schrödinger — I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it. But most came from the early days, when there was still hope for a deep meaning to go with an accurate description of what happens. Nowadays, the attitute among physicists tends to be characterised more as David Mermin's Shut up and calculate.)
    QM is a way of perceiving the universe. It is a model. As Newtonian physics was. It will be superseded. They always are. Ask Isaac Newton

    The idea we - this bipedal ape on a little planet, living here in 2023 and eating fried chicken - have now achieved a perfect understanding of the entire multiverse is risible
    Not answering the question then?
  • WestieWestie Posts: 426

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
    Just as I don't think there's any way to know for sure as yet, I don't think there's any grounds to discount it out of hand.

    As much as there can be hysterical confirmation bias in favour of things of people have seen in popular culture, there can also be another kind of confirmation bias that humans have suffered from millennia; anything outside the parameters of current understanding is axiomatically mad, laughable or dangerous. This is because anything challenging basic precepts of current physical understanding also has the capacity to jolt all sorts of other social and intellectual precepts across the board, and so present a threat to existing societies and politico-social orders.
    No. I'm perfectly open to the existence of odd phenomenon. They're great and interesting, as they can further knowledge and scientific understanding.

    As an example: the orbit of Mercury cannot be predicted by Newtonian physics. This was a big problem, and various problematic solutions were proposed: including an unknown planet called 'Vulcan'. Then Einstein came up with General Relativity, which explained Mercury's orbit perfectly.

    Now, a hidden planet called 'Vulcan' is cool. It's brilliant. It's easy for the layman to understand, and it's exciting: imagine what might be on it! The real answer, general relativity, is complex, difficult to understand and, frankly, unexciting to the layman.

    But if you're talking about aliens travelling vast distances to come to Earth, to remain mostly hidden, to be seen mainly by people in one or two countries, to kidnap and probe people from the American MidWest, and leave *zero* evidence that is conclusively alien:

    Then I'd argue that's like Vulcan. It's lazy thinking. It takes science and knowledge no further. It's like saying a Willo-the-wisp is a fairy.

    The threat to "existing societies and politico-social orders" comes from people looking for lazy answers for complex things. And sadly, politics does try to sell lazy answers to the public far too often.
    What on earth is "scientific understanding"? Science is a research methodology of a certain usefulness for investigating certain limited kinds of questions. Only a "so religious he's not religious" bonehead thinks it's the right way to look at the universe and everything in it.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 43,395
    edited June 2023

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
    Just as I don't think there's any way to know for sure as yet, I don't think there's any grounds to discount it out of hand, either.

    As much as there can be hysterical confirmation bias in favour of things of people have seen in popular culture, there can also be another kind of confirmation bias that humans have suffered from millennia; anything outside the parameters of current understanding is axiomatically mad, laughable or dangerous. This is partly because anything challenging basic precepts of current physical understanding also has the capacity to jolt all sorts of other social and intellectual precepts across the board, and so presents a threat to existing societies and socio-political orders.
    On the Alien visitors thing.

    In the 19th cent. mysterious balloons, often crewed by weird, slightly non humans were frequently reported. Where have they gone? Or did the Aliens upgraded their technology?
    Just look at this - nice ecample of technology [edit] since upgraded. How many equivalent examples today have not gone onto electric wiring and now also 5G and tinfoil hats? None of that old-fashioned pneumaticks.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tilly_Matthews

  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,260
    edited June 2023

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
    Just as I don't think there's any way to know for sure as yet, I don't think there's any grounds to discount it out of hand.

    As much as there can be hysterical confirmation bias in favour of things of people have seen in popular culture, there can also be another kind of confirmation bias that humans have suffered from millennia; anything outside the parameters of current understanding is axiomatically mad, laughable or dangerous. This is because anything challenging basic precepts of current physical understanding also has the capacity to jolt all sorts of other social and intellectual precepts across the board, and so present a threat to existing societies and politico-social orders.
    No. I'm perfectly open to the existence of odd phenomenon. They're great and interesting, as they can further knowledge and scientific understanding.

    As an example: the orbit of Mercury cannot be predicted by Newtonian physics. This was a big problem, and various problematic solutions were proposed: including an unknown planet called 'Vulcan'. Then Einstein came up with General Relativity, which explained Mercury's orbit perfectly.

    Now, a hidden planet called 'Vulcan' is cool. It's brilliant. It's easy for the layman to understand, and it's exciting: imagine what might be on it! The real answer, general relativity, is complex, difficult to understand and, frankly, unexciting to the layman.

    But if you're talking about aliens travelling vast distances to come to Earth, to remain mostly hidden, to be seen mainly by people in one or two countries, to kidnap and probe people from the American MidWest, and leave *zero* evidence that is conclusively alien:

    Then I'd argue that's like Vulcan. It's lazy thinking. It takes science and knowledge no further. It's like saying a Willo-the-wisp is a fairy.

    The threat to "existing societies and politico-social orders" comes from people looking for lazy answers for complex things. And sadly, politics does try to sell lazy answers to the public far too often.
    Grusch doesn't give simple answers ; he claims something that many other insiders have, over the years ; that this technology is interdimensional rather than interstellar, and the number of crashes are tiny compared to the number of visits. He also claims that part of his motivation in coming forward, as Greer's witnesses do, is to advance this level of understanding of physics which is not being shared beyond a few defence contractors.

    I have no idea if this is true, or if in fact US contractors and government are hiding their own independent discoveries at the expense of others, or neither of these, but Grusch's now long involvement with the US inspectorate of intelligence and Congress suggests something much more complex, than simple or easily explained.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,468

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Your choice. After all, as I've alluded to before, I just make a living teaching people this stuff.

    And yes, if you're looking for a meaning in the symbols, you're going to have a struggle. If you're asking why it works that way, I don't think anyone has that good an answer. But that's not what you said to start with;

    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it...

    And the fact is that you can see it fairly easily if you look in the right place.

    (As for the quotes, I used to start QM lessons with a selection of them- my favourite is Erwin Schrödinger — I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it. But most came from the early days, when there was still hope for a deep meaning to go with an accurate description of what happens. Nowadays, the attitute among physicists tends to be characterised more as David Mermin's Shut up and calculate.)
    Was Schrödinger referring to his cat?
    Did he even have a cat? The main place the thought experiment fails is the absurdity of the idea that any cat would be prepared to be put in a sealed box.

    Anyway, here's a towards-the-end-of-his-life Feynman quote on QM. It didn't start life as a poem, but works best that way.

    You know how it always is,
    every new idea.
    It takes a generation or two until it becomes obvious that there's no real problem.
    It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem.

    I cannot define the real problem,
    therefore I suspect there's no real problem,
    but I'm not sure there's no real problem.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,947

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Your choice. After all, as I've alluded to before, I just make a living teaching people this stuff.

    And yes, if you're looking for a meaning in the symbols, you're going to have a struggle. If you're asking why it works that way, I don't think anyone has that good an answer. But that's not what you said to start with;

    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it...

    And the fact is that you can see it fairly easily if you look in the right place.

    (As for the quotes, I used to start QM lessons with a selection of them- my favourite is Erwin Schrödinger — I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it. But most came from the early days, when there was still hope for a deep meaning to go with an accurate description of what happens. Nowadays, the attitute among physicists tends to be characterised more as David Mermin's Shut up and calculate.)
    I love the way idiots like Leon pontificate on stuff on which they haven't the first clue on the maths and feel confident to argue with, you know, actual experts and aren't in the slightest bit embarrassed. Just quote a few bits out of context or out of date will do.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,504

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
    Just as I don't think there's any way to know for sure as yet, I don't think there's any grounds to discount it out of hand.

    As much as there can be hysterical confirmation bias in favour of things of people have seen in popular culture, there can also be another kind of confirmation bias that humans have suffered from millennia; anything outside the parameters of current understanding is axiomatically mad, laughable or dangerous. This is because anything challenging basic precepts of current physical understanding also has the capacity to jolt all sorts of other social and intellectual precepts across the board, and so present a threat to existing societies and politico-social orders.
    No. I'm perfectly open to the existence of odd phenomenon. They're great and interesting, as they can further knowledge and scientific understanding.

    As an example: the orbit of Mercury cannot be predicted by Newtonian physics. This was a big problem, and various problematic solutions were proposed: including an unknown planet called 'Vulcan'. Then Einstein came up with General Relativity, which explained Mercury's orbit perfectly.

    Now, a hidden planet called 'Vulcan' is cool. It's brilliant. It's easy for the layman to understand, and it's exciting: imagine what might be on it! The real answer, general relativity, is complex, difficult to understand and, frankly, unexciting to the layman.

    But if you're talking about aliens travelling vast distances to come to Earth, to remain mostly hidden, to be seen mainly by people in one or two countries, to kidnap and probe people from the American MidWest, and leave *zero* evidence that is conclusively alien:

    Then I'd argue that's like Vulcan. It's lazy thinking. It takes science and knowledge no further. It's like saying a Willo-the-wisp is a fairy.

    The threat to "existing societies and politico-social orders" comes from people looking for lazy answers for complex things. And sadly, politics does try to sell lazy answers to the public far too often.
    Grusch doesn't give simple answers ; he claims something that many other insiders have ; that this technology is inter-dimensional rather than interstellar, and the number of crashes are tiny compared to the number of visits.

    (Snip)
    And that's the 'fairy' approach.

    Note that inter-dimensional / mutiverse stuff is very popular in films atm. Riding the zeitgeist.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 43,395

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Your choice. After all, as I've alluded to before, I just make a living teaching people this stuff.

    And yes, if you're looking for a meaning in the symbols, you're going to have a struggle. If you're asking why it works that way, I don't think anyone has that good an answer. But that's not what you said to start with;

    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it...

    And the fact is that you can see it fairly easily if you look in the right place.

    (As for the quotes, I used to start QM lessons with a selection of them- my favourite is Erwin Schrödinger — I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it. But most came from the early days, when there was still hope for a deep meaning to go with an accurate description of what happens. Nowadays, the attitute among physicists tends to be characterised more as David Mermin's Shut up and calculate.)
    Was Schrödinger referring to his cat?
    Did he even have a cat? The main place the thought experiment fails is the absurdity of the idea that any cat would be prepared to be put in a sealed box.

    Anyway, here's a towards-the-end-of-his-life Feynman quote on QM. It didn't start life as a poem, but works best that way.

    You know how it always is,
    every new idea.
    It takes a generation or two until it becomes obvious that there's no real problem.
    It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem.

    I cannot define the real problem,
    therefore I suspect there's no real problem,
    but I'm not sure there's no real problem.
    Point of order: the cat can't be put into a sealed box, by definition, without unsealing the box. First get the moggy into the box. Very easy, as a million YouTube videos testify, then whip out the Gorilla Tape.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 51,153

    Leon said:

    Aqua p.m.

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
    Just as I don't think there's any way to know for sure as yet, I don't think there's any grounds to discount it out of hand.

    As much as there can be hysterical confirmation bias in favour of things of people have seen in popular culture, there can also be another kind of confirmation bias that humans have suffered from millennia; anything outside the parameters of current understanding is axiomatically mad, laughable or dangerous. This is because anything challenging basic precepts of current physical understanding also has the capacity to jolt all sorts of other social and intellectual precepts across the board, and so present a threat to existing societies and politico-social orders.
    No. I'm perfectly open to the existence of odd phenomenon. They're great and interesting, as they can further knowledge and scientific understanding.

    As an example: the orbit of Mercury cannot be predicted by Newtonian physics. This was a big problem, and various problematic solutions were proposed: including an unknown planet called 'Vulcan'. Then Einstein came up with General Relativity, which explained Mercury's orbit perfectly.

    Now, a hidden planet called 'Vulcan' is cool. It's brilliant. It's easy for the layman to understand, and it's exciting: imagine what might be on it! The real answer, general relativity, is complex, difficult to understand and, frankly, unexciting to the layman.

    But if you're talking about aliens travelling vast distances to come to Earth, to remain mostly hidden, to be seen mainly by people in one or two countries, to kidnap and probe people from the American MidWest, and leave *zero* evidence that is conclusively alien:

    Then I'd argue that's like Vulcan. It's lazy thinking. It takes science and knowledge no further. It's like saying a Willo-the-wisp is a fairy.

    The threat to "existing societies and politico-social orders" comes from people looking for lazy answers for complex things. And sadly, politics does try to sell lazy answers to the public far too often.
    If non human intelligence exists and is visiting us - and I am highly skeptical but not entirely dismissive - it is far more likely that we are being visited by AI drones than living organisms (as we understand them) or that - as Grusch alludes - they are from a parallel dimension we cannot generally perceive. Both solutions solve the faster-than-light problem
    Why do 'AI drones' stop the faster-than-light problem?
    One theory of how to explore the galaxy is a self replicating Von Neumann machine. At each solar system, it builds x copies of itself and each heads off to other solar systems. This creates a communication network of intelligence gathering, which could cover the galaxy in a few tens of thousands of years.

    We are probably a number of decades await from doing something like that ourselves.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,260
    edited June 2023

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
    Just as I don't think there's any way to know for sure as yet, I don't think there's any grounds to discount it out of hand.

    As much as there can be hysterical confirmation bias in favour of things of people have seen in popular culture, there can also be another kind of confirmation bias that humans have suffered from millennia; anything outside the parameters of current understanding is axiomatically mad, laughable or dangerous. This is because anything challenging basic precepts of current physical understanding also has the capacity to jolt all sorts of other social and intellectual precepts across the board, and so present a threat to existing societies and politico-social orders.
    No. I'm perfectly open to the existence of odd phenomenon. They're great and interesting, as they can further knowledge and scientific understanding.

    As an example: the orbit of Mercury cannot be predicted by Newtonian physics. This was a big problem, and various problematic solutions were proposed: including an unknown planet called 'Vulcan'. Then Einstein came up with General Relativity, which explained Mercury's orbit perfectly.

    Now, a hidden planet called 'Vulcan' is cool. It's brilliant. It's easy for the layman to understand, and it's exciting: imagine what might be on it! The real answer, general relativity, is complex, difficult to understand and, frankly, unexciting to the layman.

    But if you're talking about aliens travelling vast distances to come to Earth, to remain mostly hidden, to be seen mainly by people in one or two countries, to kidnap and probe people from the American MidWest, and leave *zero* evidence that is conclusively alien:

    Then I'd argue that's like Vulcan. It's lazy thinking. It takes science and knowledge no further. It's like saying a Willo-the-wisp is a fairy.

    The threat to "existing societies and politico-social orders" comes from people looking for lazy answers for complex things. And sadly, politics does try to sell lazy answers to the public far too often.
    Grusch doesn't give simple answers ; he claims something that many other insiders have ; that this technology is inter-dimensional rather than interstellar, and the number of crashes are tiny compared to the number of visits.

    (Snip)
    And that's the 'fairy' approach.

    Note that inter-dimensional / mutiverse stuff is very popular in films atm. Riding the zeitgeist.
    It's popular because of the increasingly wide and common speculative thrust of it from theoretical physicists, though.

    That didn't arise spontaneously out of folklore.
  • kjh said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Your choice. After all, as I've alluded to before, I just make a living teaching people this stuff.

    And yes, if you're looking for a meaning in the symbols, you're going to have a struggle. If you're asking why it works that way, I don't think anyone has that good an answer. But that's not what you said to start with;

    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it...

    And the fact is that you can see it fairly easily if you look in the right place.

    (As for the quotes, I used to start QM lessons with a selection of them- my favourite is Erwin Schrödinger — I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it. But most came from the early days, when there was still hope for a deep meaning to go with an accurate description of what happens. Nowadays, the attitute among physicists tends to be characterised more as David Mermin's Shut up and calculate.)
    I love the way idiots like Leon pontificate on stuff on which they haven't the first clue on the maths and feel confident to argue with, you know, actual experts and aren't in the slightest bit embarrassed. Just quote a few bits out of context or out of date will do.
    It's a trait that seems to be shared by many philosophy graduates, as least the ones I've met. They must all take a module titled "Why philosophers understand any subject better than anyone without having to actually study it".
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,772
    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Your choice. After all, as I've alluded to before, I just make a living teaching people this stuff.

    And yes, if you're looking for a meaning in the symbols, you're going to have a struggle. If you're asking why it works that way, I don't think anyone has that good an answer. But that's not what you said to start with;

    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it...

    And the fact is that you can see it fairly easily if you look in the right place.

    (As for the quotes, I used to start QM lessons with a selection of them- my favourite is Erwin Schrödinger — I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it. But most came from the early days, when there was still hope for a deep meaning to go with an accurate description of what happens. Nowadays, the attitute among physicists tends to be characterised more as David Mermin's Shut up and calculate.)
    Was Schrödinger referring to his cat?
    Did he even have a cat? The main place the thought experiment fails is the absurdity of the idea that any cat would be prepared to be put in a sealed box.

    Anyway, here's a towards-the-end-of-his-life Feynman quote on QM. It didn't start life as a poem, but works best that way.

    You know how it always is,
    every new idea.
    It takes a generation or two until it becomes obvious that there's no real problem.
    It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem.

    I cannot define the real problem,
    therefore I suspect there's no real problem,
    but I'm not sure there's no real problem.
    Point of order: the cat can't be put into a sealed box, by definition, without unsealing the box. First get the moggy into the box. Very easy, as a million YouTube videos testify, then whip out the Gorilla Tape.
    It's an old un, but a good un

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC372253
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,509
    DougSeal said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    Malc, has it been a bad year for turnips? You've been getting really mad at everyone and not threatened to throw a single one.

    ydoethur, I am mad at only one person on here and if I could he would have several turnips inserted in every orifice and a few he did not realise he had.
    I am fully aware if your position regarding my good self Malc. I too will one day shuffle off this mortal coil. I hope it makes you feel better.
    Most certainly not you Doug, you are among the good guys. I am talking about the only scumbag on the site, a gammontastic arse at that.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 51,153

    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    Your choice. After all, as I've alluded to before, I just make a living teaching people this stuff.

    And yes, if you're looking for a meaning in the symbols, you're going to have a struggle. If you're asking why it works that way, I don't think anyone has that good an answer. But that's not what you said to start with;

    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it...

    And the fact is that you can see it fairly easily if you look in the right place.

    (As for the quotes, I used to start QM lessons with a selection of them- my favourite is Erwin Schrödinger — I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it. But most came from the early days, when there was still hope for a deep meaning to go with an accurate description of what happens. Nowadays, the attitute among physicists tends to be characterised more as David Mermin's Shut up and calculate.)
    I love the way idiots like Leon pontificate on stuff on which they haven't the first clue on the maths and feel confident to argue with, you know, actual experts and aren't in the slightest bit embarrassed. Just quote a few bits out of context or out of date will do.
    It's a trait that seems to be shared by many philosophy graduates, as least the ones I've met. They must all take a module titled "Why philosophers understand any subject better than anyone without having to actually study it".
    I did rather enjoy the letter a bunch of French philosophers wrote about how when they said we live in a post-truth world and there are no absolutes, they didn’t quite mean that….
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,260
    edited June 2023
    I'd also question that it's only lazy thinking that presents a challenge to current societies, because it's irrational.

    This is to be unable to escape our own prejudices ; there was nothing lazy about Gallileo's thinking, but he was considered not just mad and bad, and evil and dangerous, but axiomatically irrational, too, because the centrality of the Earth was thought to be the combined moral-rational summit of intellectual understanding, too. Now one could conceivably argue that Galileo provided much more worked-through scientific proof than David Grusch, and which eventually helped to expand our understanding and societies rather than muddy them, but that could just be because we're at the start of the process. I honestly have no idea, on that last point.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,263
    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics? None. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, and I doubt you even understand it (this is not a personal jibe, it is famously hard to understand even for mega brained boffins)

    Yet you believe it is true because experts tell you, despite quantum physics having some outrageous implications - Schrödingers cat, the uncertainty principle, superpositions, instantaneous transmission of info across the universe etc
    Greatest of respect, you're talking tosh. Because you're a philosopher and journalist, not a physicist.

    Many of the philosophical implications of QM are outrageous, but often that comes from asking questions that seem like they should have an
    answer but turn out not to. Take the uncertainty principle- you can't know where something is and how fast it's moving to perfect precision. Sounds outrageous, because we're used to doing that for big objects. But in the situation where QM matters, it turns out impossible anyway. If you have a single atom and shine light on it to see where it is, the knock of the light makes it wobble a bit, so we don't know position and speed exactly. Like QM says.

    And for proof that QM happens, all you need is coloured garden lights, preferably battery or solar powered. As the battery runs down, the blue goes first and the red last. That's because particles of blue light have more energy in them than for red. And that's the guts of QM. It works. It's just that the maths is hard.

    https://youtu.be/iGw_qjUT5DA
    Well yeah. I’m not a physicist. And even physicists struggle to understand quantum physics


    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    RICHARD FEYNMAN

    “Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense”

    ROGER PENROSE



    No offence but I’ll go with them over “@stuartinromford”
    There is s difference between seeing how it works out and why it works. You were denying its very existence. Yet IO demonstrate its existence every time I switch on the light bulb.
    I didn’t deny its existence at all. I was making the point that we accept it is real because the scientists tell us it is real, despite it being very hard to understand even for expert physicists. As per the quotes adduced. Do keep up
    We accept it’s real because it predicts a whole mess of real world stuff, without which modern society wouldn’t function.
    You’re confusing the difference between an incomplete explanation of real world phenomena, and something which might (probably doesn’t, without new evidence) exist.

  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,913

    Leon said:

    Aqua p.m.

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    Or it's just a hysteria; people trying to explain things they see or mis-see in the sky.

    One thing it isn't: aliens.

    And having discounted aliens, we've got some really great stuff to research. Hopefully increased usage of mobile phone cameras will help get more data - though sadly, so will forgeries (especially with cameras that do a massive amount of preprocessing of captured images).
    Just as I don't think there's any way to know for sure as yet, I don't think there's any grounds to discount it out of hand.

    As much as there can be hysterical confirmation bias in favour of things of people have seen in popular culture, there can also be another kind of confirmation bias that humans have suffered from millennia; anything outside the parameters of current understanding is axiomatically mad, laughable or dangerous. This is because anything challenging basic precepts of current physical understanding also has the capacity to jolt all sorts of other social and intellectual precepts across the board, and so present a threat to existing societies and politico-social orders.
    No. I'm perfectly open to the existence of odd phenomenon. They're great and interesting, as they can further knowledge and scientific understanding.

    As an example: the orbit of Mercury cannot be predicted by Newtonian physics. This was a big problem, and various problematic solutions were proposed: including an unknown planet called 'Vulcan'. Then Einstein came up with General Relativity, which explained Mercury's orbit perfectly.

    Now, a hidden planet called 'Vulcan' is cool. It's brilliant. It's easy for the layman to understand, and it's exciting: imagine what might be on it! The real answer, general relativity, is complex, difficult to understand and, frankly, unexciting to the layman.

    But if you're talking about aliens travelling vast distances to come to Earth, to remain mostly hidden, to be seen mainly by people in one or two countries, to kidnap and probe people from the American MidWest, and leave *zero* evidence that is conclusively alien:

    Then I'd argue that's like Vulcan. It's lazy thinking. It takes science and knowledge no further. It's like saying a Willo-the-wisp is a fairy.

    The threat to "existing societies and politico-social orders" comes from people looking for lazy answers for complex things. And sadly, politics does try to sell lazy answers to the public far too often.
    If non human intelligence exists and is visiting us - and I am highly skeptical but not entirely dismissive - it is far more likely that we are being visited by AI drones than living organisms (as we understand them) or that - as Grusch alludes - they are from a parallel dimension we cannot generally perceive. Both solutions solve the faster-than-light problem
    Why do 'AI drones' stop the faster-than-light problem?
    One theory of how to explore the galaxy is a self replicating Von Neumann machine. At each solar system, it builds x copies of itself and each heads off to other solar systems. This creates a communication network of intelligence gathering, which could cover the galaxy in a few tens of thousands of years.

    We are probably a number of decades await from doing something like that ourselves.
    And of course it's weird that nobody else seems to have done so. Thus proof of FTL travel for cleaning ladys! (We don't see these vn machines, but we know they must have been built, therefore somebody has managed to do a very effective cleanup, and that only works if cleaning ladys can travel ftl.)
  • WestieWestie Posts: 426

    If UFOs are real, then why are they predominantly an American / British thing?

    https://www.rpubs.com/skl/775554

    Some possibilities:
    *) UFO hysteria is mainly a product of the English-speaking world;
    *) Despite the preponderance worldwide of the Internet, people elsewhere do not report them.
    *) Aliens are only interested in English-speaking peoples.

    It could also be that it's the US military, as still the world's most advanced, that is doing the largest number of odd things, ofcourse ; that might partly account for the greater number of sightings.

    Again that could be intra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or involving blue and green camembert set fire to, for instance.
    I question your use of the word "hysteria". But it could be that the weight of the scientific religion is so strong, relatively, in the saddo cultural area that you mention, that the unconscious that obviously rejects the said religion has to force its way out in such a crystallised "WTF about this, then?" way. This doesn't happen so much in the Arab world, where most believe there are djinns and few have much of a problem with that belief, or in Latin America where most believe there are angels, ditto.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,416

    Grusch doesn't give simple answers ; he claims...that this technology is interdimensional rather than interstellar, and the number of crashes are tiny compared to the number of visits. He also claims that part of his motivation in coming forward...is to advance this level of understanding of physics which is not being shared beyond a few defence contractors.

    I have no idea if this is true...

    I'll go with "it's false".

    :)

  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 8,188
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I recommend a full viewing of the UFO whistleblower interview

    It is extraordinary. For a start his CV checks out. He really is - or was until recently - a senior US intel officer. He was working on UFOs. He does have specialised scientific training

    And his claims are toys-in-the-attic insane. The Vatican knows about UFOs. Mussolini had one (it crashed in Italy). They may come from other dimensions. They have killed people. We are not alone!

    https://twitter.com/ackmeni/status/1668148960668819456?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

    As you watch it your brain toggles between several different interpretations. Is he simply mad? No, he doesn’t seem mad. Is he being paid to do this, or ordered to, as part of some psy ops against China or whatever? Maybe - but then why make such outrageous claims that sound SO bonkers. The pope, really?

    Is it a joke? If it is - what’s the pay off? He is risking his reputation and career - his life, really - by saying this stuff. Does he actually believe everything he says? Perhaps. Perhaps it is true. But then you come back to the WTF stuff about the Vatican. It can’t be true

    Maybe he has been brilliantly manipulated, perhaps even drugged

    I confess I have no idea, no answer really covers all the bases. My point is: this level of insanity cannot be sustained and we are surely reaching the moment when the truth will out, whatever that might be

    A space YouTuber I've started watching again recently (angry astronaut) has started doing stuff on UFOs as well as his usual fare of space industry stuff. The reason? It gets a heck of a lot more hits and engagement. People like UFO stuff.

    And that might be your answer: this gentleman may be risking his career, but his reputation amongst the UFOlogists will be massive, and will keep him in lucre for a long time.

    Look at AA's video views: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

    "If UFOs are alien, where are they from? What do they want?" - 125k views.
    "So you want to be a Martian? How to be a SpaceX colonist!" - 11k views
    "Government Whistleblower: Alien Craft recovered! Pentagon, NASA reveal more spherical UFOs!" - 321k views
    "Will China's new Starship clone bury NASA and Artemis?" - 17k views

    Basically, UFO ones get 10 time or more views.
    Similar story with the antivaxx stuff - there's a very good living indeed to be made out it for some.
    That explanation doesn’t cover 85% of the stuff coming from high levels of the US Establishment

    In fact, I don’t think it explains this guy. A highly respected, ambitious, intelligent intel officer with an extremely bright career ahead of him. He’s still young

    He throws that all away and comes out with absolutely ridiculous claims about the Vatican handing a crashed UFO to America after WW2. He exposes himself to global ridicule. His career is over. He risks prosecution by his own side. And he does all this because… he might make a few quid on niche UFO websites? Does that look like a good deal?

    It doesn’t. If he is simply a devious grifter he would not have made such outlandish statements that beggar any belief. He’d have reined it in

    Same goes for psy ops. This isn’t very good psy ops. It’s too surreal. “These beings may exist in parallel dimensions”. That’s not going to frighten Beijing

    We are left with two options: he is mad or he really believes all this. Or both. He doesn’t look mad
    Until some actual evidence of something
    comes out, I don't much care either way.
    Wake us up when it does.
    What “actual” evidence do you have for the truth of quantum physics?
    The computer you are typing on uses semi-conductors that depend on QM.

    So, if quantum mechanics did not work, we would be deprived of your ravings as there would be no internet. The fact that you can post here proves QM works.

    If you want more proof, how about solar panels? That is what Einstein got his Nobel Prize for, not for relativity.

This discussion has been closed.