The UFO to ET intelligence Connection

a reply to: mirageman

Good points, and a fascinating (and useful) OP by Ecto.

Since joining ATS in late-2018, riding the wave of interest sparked by UK mainstream media reporting of AATIP, this place has helped me to focus, expand and, in many cases, thoroughly debunk a wide selection of 'classic' cases since Kenneth Arnold's bizarre 1947 sighting (more 'bizarre' than many imagine if we are to believe Ken's conclusion that he saw living organisms rather than metallic craft - Kev recently reminded us of this, and I wrote a thread on the topic).

The limitations of time based on the supposed age of the universe are a spanner in the works of many ET theories, but I have always felt uncomfortable with the Big Bang theory itself, although it raises the far more intriguing question of what absolute 'nothingness' was 'composed of' beforehand - which is magnificently mind-bending in itself!

After the dust has settled on all the well-known historical cases, I really don't have much left to chew on, aside from some thought-provoking and extremely curious sightings - eg Ken Arnold (despite his naivety as an amateur UFO sleuth after the event), the Kaikoura Lights (1978) and, as I always mention, the exceptionally strange close encounter by Bob Taylor up in Scotland (1979).

Aside from those popular cases, it is the personal, more private encounters that intrigue me most, and there are plenty of those that our own ATS members can relate. While I remain a UFO 'virgin', my wife's own sighting of a gigantic Black Triangle (years before they were a thang) still leaves me scratching my head - I trust her feelings about it whilst acknowledging the plethora of explanations that could account for it, too. Her own opinion that it "simply didn't seem to belong to our reality" has always fascinated me, though - that a friend saw it with her helped, of course!

So what am I saying? I have no #ing idea! And that pretty much sums up the entire phenomenon, if indeed there even is a phenomenon beyond straightforward misidentification or misunderstanding of human perceptions.

I have more or less thrown the UFO towel in - I've shot my load, so to speak - but I still enjoy reading some of the more thoughtful and penetrating threads such as this one.

a reply to: ConfusedBrit

Good to hear from you again CB.

After 70 years ufology is stuck and still scrambling around for the 'best evidence'. So we are served crappy photos and indistinct video. Many hoaxed.

We are presented with ancient cave paintings and wood cuttings out of context as 'proof' of aliens. As if the ancestors didn't have imaginations in pre-history and tell stories.

Or we hear that the universe is so vast (which is actually the problem) that there must be life out there and therefore it must be visiting us.

Then there's the "mountain of evidence" which is always kept at a very superficial level because when you start to dig there is actually no proof to back up any claims that any UFO was an alien controlled craft. Just a mystery at best.

Sometimes we hear a quote about the large number of people who believe in aliens. But that's as useless as claiming more than half the Earth's population are religious, to prove God must exist.

Or a particularly popular one is to appeal to authority figures. Especially fighter pilots who see UFOs. We are always told how they become "trained observers" of absolutely everything. Sent for decades to study meteorology, astrophysics, atmospheric science and of ophthalmics before they are even let into a cockpit!!! Then of course they are read into every top secret project by not just the US, but by allies and adversaries too. All before a visit to every space research facility on the planet. There is nothing these guys don't know that is known. Yet J. Allen Hynek found they actually were witnesses most prone to misperception when reporting UFOs!!

Finally, we have the 'consciousness'. Which along with quantum physics is 'new magic' to explain the UFO mystery with something not understood!! Certainly by the people who proclaim it as the answer.

There are still mysteries of the sky to be solved. But ufology will never be taken seriously while it has no standards of evidence and accepts cross pollution from all sorts of flaky fringe groups (as I mentioned earlier).

But maybe the majority of people don't actually want answers? They really just want entertainment.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

No argument at all about misperceptions being responsible for reports. Also that it is possible for your eyes to see something and your brain misidentify it.

The issue I have is that he saw something - he applied a label to it (alien spacecraft) - then because that is so highly unlikely he explains it away by saying that we can't trust our brains to tell us the truth.

So no, I don't think that is a very scientific approach at all.

Is the archetypal flying saucer pre-wired into human brains so that it pops up whenever anything anomalous is seen in the sky ? Maybe to a certain extent since widely seen in popular media but as you know reports go way back.

I think it's quite probable that he actually saw something anomalous and that what his eyes saw was correctly interpreted by his brain. What that anomaly was should be the question, not what it wasn't based on an equation with mostly unquantifiable variables.

In my experience I have found the brain has a tendency to rationalise anomalous events and that time passing aids the process. I think that is what has happened here and he can't even accept his own evidence at face value.

a reply to: chunder

Maybe the post above is too simplistic - I guess I just get triggered by science types who get to spend billions in research trying to identify a tiny particle of matter that has been theorised to exist but ignore the testimony of thousands if not millions because our brains lied to us that a phenomenon actually exists.

And maybe it is identifying and understanding the latter rather than the former that would prove more beneficial.

originally posted by: ConfusedBrit
I still enjoy reading some of the more thoughtful and penetrating threads such as this one.

Thanks for acknowledging that. I feel the board has taken a drift from "denying ignorance".