Intelligence official say U.S. has retrieved craft of non-human origin

[Axxman300]

It's not so much that we can't believe what eye witnesses say they saw, it's their interpretation of what they saw that is unreliable. If they say they saw "a light in the sky moving at hypersonic speed", the hypersonic speed bit is an interpretation, not an observation, because they can have no idea how big and far away the source of the light was and hence cannot possibly estimate the speed. This is why the light from Venus being bounced around in the atmosphere and a firefly doing its mating flight can both be mistaken for aircraft sized objects a few thousand feet up doing physically impossible maneuvers.

Years ago on an early morning drive to work I saw the most spectacular thing in the southwestern sky. A white shimmering streak, miles long was stretching across the the Central Valley of California. It looked like the sky was being torn open. This lasted a few minutes and then quickly vanished (at least from my view).

Come to find out what I saw was the space shuttle, Discovery returning from orbit to Edwards AFB, 300 miles to the southeast of where I was, just north of Monterey. What I saw was the superheated shuttle flying through freezing air, heating water molecules briefly, and those molecules freezing into ice crystals. I just happened to be in the right place, with the rising sun at the perfect angle to make the ice crystals glow. As I drove south, the sun rose, and my angle of view shifted to make it all invisible again.

I'm not an expert on anything, but I'm a huge aviation buff. I used my knowledge to check the arrival time of Discovery at Edwards, and pieced the rest together. I have seen two UFOs, both long ago. One I think I can write off to a combination of three individual things happening at the same time and same place. The second one I still have no idea what it was, but it was huge.

 

[MBDK]

I have noticed that I occasionally see what appears to be one of my cats out of the corner of my eye, only to realize upon more focused attention that it was just my imagination. Similar experiences occur when I am laying in bed, and sometimes feel what I believe to be one of my cats jumping on the bed, but reality discloses no such event occurred. Both my cats are fairly young (about 5 years old) and healthy, so there can be no claim of a spirit presence. What I realize has happened is I have become attuned to looking for them and feeling their presence (via touch, weight shift noticed in cushions, etc.) through my normal, everyday routine, and my mind subconsciously seeks to identify their company. So, a slight movement, odd shadow, or natural weight shift can suddenly trigger an association to one of them, although they are elsewhere.

It is obvious to me that inadvertently preconditioning yourself to expect certain things to appear or happen, naturally prejudices your mind to make that so. In my case, I keep sensing my cats though they are not immediately where I imagined them. In other people's lives, these illusions become bigfoot, ghosts, UAPs, etc. It's all just a natural phenomenon of our minds' constructs.

 

[Explorer]

I have noticed that I occasionally see what appears to be one of my cats out of the corner of my eye, only to realize upon more focused attention that it was just my imagination. Similar experiences occur when I am laying in bed, and sometimes feel what I believe to be one of my cats jumping on the bed, but reality discloses no such event occurred. Both my cats are fairly young (about 5 years old) and healthy, so there can be no claim of a spirit presence. What I realize has happened is I have become attuned to looking for them and feeling their presence (via touch, weight shift noticed in cushions, etc.) through my normal, everyday routine, and my mind subconsciously seeks to identify their company. So, a slight movement, odd shadow, or natural weight shift can suddenly trigger an association to one of them, although they are elsewhere.

It is obvious to me that inadvertently preconditioning yourself to expect certain things to appear or happen, naturally prejudices your mind to make that so. In my case, I keep sensing my cats though they are not immediately where I imagined them. In other people's lives, these illusions become bigfoot, ghosts, UAPs, etc. It's all just a natural phenomenon of our minds' constructs.

Yes, the cat thing is very common I think, and it certainly happens to me on many occasions. If we did see a genuine ET craft/probe in the sky, then for me at least, that would be "natural", if it was created by an entity from another part of the universe. Even illusions or delusions are a "natural" product of the brain, including normal functioning brains.

Personally, I have never seen anything in the sky over my long life that could not be explained rationally, and even if I had seen something a bit strange, it is never too difficult to find an explanation, valid or otherwise, to dismiss it as "natural" phenomena. Only when we have ET hardware that hangs around long enough to evaluate, can we ever be certain that we are not alone. Considering that the UFO stuff in terms of popular comment only really kicked off from the days of Kenneth Arnold, this has been a tiny fraction of time in our human experience, so perhaps eventually with all the time in the world ahead of us, a successive generation may one day be gifted with something definitive, permanent, and not just an elusive transient object in the sky.

 

[MRC_Hans]

I think that in a discussion like this, it is important to distinguish between 'see' and 'perceive'.

We may see one thing, as in our eyes receive a certain image, but we may perceive something else, that is, our brain interprets as something else.

Hans

 

[MBDK]

I think that in a discussion like this, it is important to distinguish between 'see' and 'perceive'.

We may see one thing, as in our eyes receive a certain image, but we may perceive something else, that is, our brain interprets as something else.

Hans

Absolutely. My last post is intended to express the same basic thought. I just figured relating my life experience would flesh it out a bit.

 

[Axxman300]

Meanwhile, Stephen Greenstreet is reporting that in 2009, Senator Harry Reid ,

Listed 14 names "currently" part of AAWSAP, his embattled ghost hunting program at the Pentagon.

#9 is Michael Greene, the future husband of Alex Dietrich

Dietrich is one of the Navy pilots who claims to have witnessed the "Tic Tac" UFO in 2004.

I need to ask, what the hell is really going on here?

 

[arthwollipot]

It's not so much that we can't believe what eye witnesses say they saw, it's their interpretation of what they saw that is unreliable. If they say they saw "a light in the sky moving at hypersonic speed", the hypersonic speed bit is an interpretation, not an observation, because they can have no idea how big and far away the source of the light was and hence cannot possibly estimate the speed. This is why the light from Venus being bounced around in the atmosphere and a firefly doing its mating flight can both be mistaken for aircraft sized objects a few thousand feet up doing physically impossible maneuvers.

The problem is that they don't say that they saw "a light in the sky moving at hypersonic speed" they say they saw "a cigar-shaped UFO moving at hypersonic speed".

It's the subjective interpretation that we doubt. We don't doubt that they saw something but whatever they saw is not what they describe seeing.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

It's not so much that we can't believe what eye witnesses say they saw, it's their interpretation of what they saw that is unreliable.

According to some it is.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

The problem is that they don't say that they saw "a light in the sky moving at hypersonic speed" they say they saw "a cigar-shaped UFO moving at hypersonic speed".

So you're saying if someone describes a light in the sky as 'cigar-shaped' they are wrong? How do you know that?

People use the acronym 'UFO' because that what it is commonly called, and everyone knows what it stands for. Problem is some people - including so-called 'skeptics' - attach more meaning to it than simply 'unidentified'. Then these 'skeptics' attack straw men instead of examining the actual evidence.

 

[arthwollipot]

So you're saying if someone describes a light in the sky as 'cigar-shaped' they are wrong? How do you know that?

People use the acronym 'UFO' because that what it is commonly called, and everyone knows what it stands for. Problem is some people - including so-called 'skeptics' - attach more meaning to it than simply 'unidentified'. Then these 'skeptics' attack straw men instead of examining the actual evidence.

No, I'm saying that people will see something, but describe it inaccurately. Either because they think they might be seeing a genuine alien spaceship, or that their brain has misidentified it as something else. Though it is absolutely true that they saw something, you can't assume that their description of it is accurate, especially when they start to attribute properties to the thing they saw (it descended 18,000 feet in five seconds!)

We do not doubt that they saw something. We doubt that their description of what they saw is accurate.

 

[Pixel42]

According to some it is.

Well sometimes it is, which is why I said "not so much" rather than "not at all". But it's more likely that it will be at the interpretation stage that errors are made. Like for example the observer might assume that the thing they're looking at is an aircraft-sized object at a typical aircraft distance and describe its speed and maneuvers accordingly, even though they have no actual basis for that assumption.

 

[Delvo]

So you're saying if someone describes a light in the sky as 'cigar-shaped'...

I've never heard of anybody saying they say a cigar-shaped light. The cigar-shaped sightings I've heard of have all been described as non-glowing objects seen by the light of the sun complete with shading.

 

[arthwollipot]

I've never heard of anybody saying they say a cigar-shaped light. The cigar-shaped sightings I've heard of have all been described as non-glowing objects seen by the light of the sun complete with shading.

But are those accurate descriptions of what was actually seen by the person? Or did the person describe whatever they saw according to their biases and assumptions?

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Sorry for jumping into a thread late without reading the whole thing, but this is all so dumb on so many levels. He's saying that he hasn't personally seen any real evidence, but that someone else told him. Is that it in a nutshell?

The credulity of some people is jaw-dropping.

In some instances the claim is that somebody he trusts told him that somebody else told them that they (the third person) saw something.

Of course, given that at least some of the stuff that he's said other people have witnessed to him about turned out to be long debunked fakes, like the nazi bell ufo, he's either lying through his teeth or he's got a seious case of Fr. Dougal's Spider Baby.

 

[MBDK]

Then these 'skeptics' attack straw men instead of examining the actual evidence.

When being told the recollection of an experience someone had, that the teller believes to be incredible, the evidence is normally too limited to make any substantial conclusion. The only thing that has been proven, time after time, is when there actually IS evidence sufficient for detailed analysis, that evidence has unfailingly turned out to be something incompatible with the more fantastic original descriptions, and/or comparatively mundane (example: the VERY numerous times planets and stars have not only been mistaken for atmospheric objects, but also reported to perform impressive maneuvers).

 

[MRC_Hans]

I've never heard of anybody saying they say a cigar-shaped light. The cigar-shaped sightings I've heard of have all been described as non-glowing objects seen by the light of the sun complete with shading.

I have once seen a cigar-shaped light. One slightly hazy afternoon, moving in a straight line over the city (Copenhagen), at a moderate speed. After a while, the light went out and....

.....


I could now see the contour of an airliner on the approach to CPH airport. The low sun had been reflected along the fuselage.

Hans

 

[Delvo]

Maybe that was an alien ship. Xenu's, for example, coincidentally happen to look like a passenger/cargo plane designed in the mid-20th century.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Maybe that was an alien ship. Xenu's, for example, coincidentally happen to look like a passenger/cargo plane designed in the mid-20th century.

Actually a very good point. A highly advanced alien civilization observing and exploring Earth would be unlikely to fly around in any conspicuous ways, or if they needed to go slow and low would paint "UFO" in large letters on the craft to make sure any observers would be ridiculed.

Some hi-tech cabal from some nation of Earth would do the same.

Indeed the only scenarios I can think of that fit the current narrative of 3/4 of a century (or more) of obvious sightings but no (or at best sporadic) contacts are that either they are extremely advanced and simply don't regards us as anything but some sort of creepy maggots, or they are highly decadent and what we see is the equivalent of drunk teenagers fooling around on their equivalent of motorcycles and pimped pick-up trucks.

Hans

 

[Andy_Ross]

Maybe that was an alien ship. Xenu's, for example, coincidentally happen to look like a passenger/cargo plane designed in the mid-20th century.

Isn't the story that the design of our aircraft is inspired by a memory of Xenu's ships?

 

[MRC_Hans]

Had to look up "Xenu". Gosh! Even if taken as a sci-fi story it is bollocks.

Hans