Thoughts on UAP & discourse surrounding them

What follows are just some thoughts about the current situation. The first two sections are about the state of discourse in the community, while the last is about UAPs and the governments knowledge and motivations. I am not an expert in anything, so take this for what you will. Hopefully this spurs some interesting discussion.

First let me say: I want to believe. I really do.

In fact, I do believe. I believe that it is almost certain intelligent life has developed elsewhere in the universe. I believe that our current understanding of physics and the nature of reality is far from the full picture, farther than I think many want to admit. I believe it that it is likely that advanced civilizations exist out there and that their technology would seem to be magic to us, even potentially completely at odds with our current understanding. I believe that it is within the realm of possibility that, if so, these intelligent entities have found us & visited us in one way or another. I believe that there are objects with unknown origin that seem to be acting intelligently operating in US airspace. I believe there is a possibility that some of these are controlled by advanced intelligence that is not of this earth.

Not All UAPs are Created Equal

Both believers and skeptics fall into the same trap often, ie., (dis)proving one UAP is (dis)proving all UAP. Personally, I think the vast majority of the UAP sightings have prosaic origins even if ufologists, the government, or debunkers can’t definitively determine what it is.

That doesn’t mean that every UAP has a prosaic origin, though. If only one of the many incidents is indeed a run-in with non-human intelligence, that is enough to change everything. Each UAP needs to be dealt with on its own terms, debunking one does not mean all the others have been debunked.

The same go for believers who latch on to every fuzzy image as yet more proof. Accepting that the most recent images from Corbell are less than compelling at best or even completely explainable through bokeh does not mean that the Nimitz encounter is as well. Further, we also shouldn’t ascribe behavior from one incident to another. Don’t defend an image of the batman balloon by citing the behavior of the tic tac, unless we have evidence that the batman balloon also engaged in similar behavior. Again, each needs to be dealt with on its own terms. The tic tac may be an alien craft, and the batman balloon may just be a batman ballon.

Never Trust a Government Spook (Unless He is Confirming Your Priors)

The favorite defense of true believers these days goes something like “do you think that the US military, with all its advanced technology & highly trained personnel, are incapable of identifying [whatever the proposed prosaic explanation is, e.g. bokeh or spy balloons]“. How convincing this argument is depends on how competent you believe the government and military to be.

Underlying this defense, though usually unspoken, is the idea that we should take the government’s word at face value. This is crazy to me. People interested in this topic should know the government’s capacity for lying better than most. It is well known that the defense & intelligence agencies have fostered UFO discussion to help cover up testing of new military technology in the past.

No matter if you are a true believer or a debunker, we should all be skeptical of the story being fed to us. Lue Elizondo has stated himself that he was a counter-intelligence special agent. He may not be working with the government in any officially recognized capacity currently, but it is very common for “retired” agents to still be working unofficially. Even if not, it is clear he is in contact with the government and in no way adversarial to them. Everything he says is in strict accordance with what the government will allow him to say.

This also goes for all the other retired spooks coming out of the woodwork to drop crumbs on the news, like John Brennan & James Woolsey. I never took their word at face value when they were working for the government, I am certainly not going to start now.

To be clear, I am not asserting that the “ongoing disclosure” is necessarily a coordinated conspiracy. I just think we need to remain open to the possibility and that taking “ex” spies at their word is deeply misguided. Just because the narrative being nurtured is one many of us wish to be true doesn’t mean we should drop our well-founded skepticism of government or military agencies & their personnel.

So What is Actually Going On?

It is clear that something is going on. The leaks and subsequent confirmations by the Pentagon, the interviews with Elizondo, Brennan, et al., and the continuing mainstream news coverage all make that clear. But what does it all mean?

I am not going to pretend to have an answer. I am as confused as anyone else. But I will lay out some possibilities as I see them. I think there are good arguments both for and against all of these and it may be that all of them are true to some degree.

1. Government conspiracy: “disclosure” is an orchestrated psychological operation or counterintelligence program. What exactly the motive is is unclear, but it could be covering up advanced military technology, communicating something to our adversaries, generating more funding, etc. This doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone is in on the conspiracy, many might just be “useful idiots”

2. True Believers & conmen hijacking incompetence: This is more or less the theory advanced in The Drive recently. The most compelling UAP are actually intelligence gathering operations by adversaries, utilizing advanced drones, radar spoofing, and other breakthrough technology. It could also be that they are black projects being tested by our own government. The uncertainty is due to incompetence and poor communication between government & military entities. Elizondo and his allies may be true believers that have seized upon this confusion to advance the narrative they prefer in good faith. Or they may be conmen that are taking advantage of the uncertainty for their own gain, whether that gain is financial or just notoriety. Or maybe somewhere in-between.

3. Acculturation of UAP Reality: The government knows that at least some UAP are the result of non-human intelligence. For one reason or another, they cannot continue to hide this knowledge so they are trying to slowly condition the public to this reality.

4. Everyone is lost: The government has no idea what these phenomenon are. They may be the result of non-human intelligence or they may just be some combination of natural phenomena, technical malfunctions, human psychology, and so on. The government doesn’t know all that much more than us. The recent leaks and press are just due to this shared confusion and intrigue inherent in it.

I’m not sure which of these I believe. I want to believe it is #3 and think it certainly is possible, but I will not be surprised at all if it ends up being any of the others. Occam’s Razor would suggest that 3 is the least likely, since it assumes that non-human intelligence exists and has found its way to earth, both inherently extraordinary claims (much more extraordinary than incompetence or conspiracy, both of which we have proof of occurring in the past).

Yet some of these phenomena really do seem to resist prosaic explanation and when taken together could plausibly suggest that we are being visited by non-human intelligence. Of course that is only if the evidence that has been communicated to us is the truth, which it may not be.

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source https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/mszcz6/thoughts_on_uap_discourse_surrounding_them/