<story><title>UFO: Pilot who spotted famous Tic Tac breaks silence after 15 years</title><url>http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-and-a-with-navy-pilot-chad-underwood.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>willis936</author><text>Anytime I try to pursue the UFO question I feel like I’m being intentionally gaslighted by government agencies.  The public-ish analysis of UFOs, AATIP is an incredible farce.  They focused on star trek warp drives and after the funding dried up they started hanging out with Blink 182 to smoke weed and pat each other on the back for being crazy alien believers.  These aren’t sound scientific minds that are capable of analyzing the evidence available.  Those people exist and I’m certain their analyses do as well, but no one gets to see them.&lt;p&gt;I struggle to even come up with narratives as to why this specific case would be made public.  Perhaps the intelligence agencies knew it wouldn’t be possible to cover up so the best they can do is release the evidence that was expected to make its way to the public and say nothing about it officially.  If I put on a tinfoil hat I could say that the AATIP’s purpose was to instill doubt that aliens exist, but that would imply that they do exist.  It seems that the intelligence agencies are behaving like they want to give as little information as possible about it.  I can’t imagine the AATIP was made top-down.  It appears to just be a congressman’s publicity stunt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Jd</author><text>Sometimes it has an easy explanation given typical information asymmetries and incentive structures. For example, you don&amp;#x27;t give away any of your external intel during a war (i.e. cold war) in the case that you are identifying something by your enemy that might be trying to hide from you. Letting them know you can detect them would be stupid. Also, for similar reasons, record and catalogue every strange phenomenon in case it could be something.&lt;p&gt;The natural correlate from a citizen perspective is that the government is hiding something (i.e. UFOs). Of course it is, that&amp;#x27;s the point. But then the point becomes less of a point the less justification there is for wartime behavior, which then leads to increased speculation that the government is hiding something which at some points boils over into widespread public sentiment.&lt;p&gt;Then at that point there is both incentive to do selective release and for the media to cover it since they know readers want to read about UFOs, etc.&lt;p&gt;I think that&amp;#x27;s the Ockham&amp;#x27;s razor here.</text></comment>
<story><title>UFO: Pilot who spotted famous Tic Tac breaks silence after 15 years</title><url>http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-and-a-with-navy-pilot-chad-underwood.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>willis936</author><text>Anytime I try to pursue the UFO question I feel like I’m being intentionally gaslighted by government agencies.  The public-ish analysis of UFOs, AATIP is an incredible farce.  They focused on star trek warp drives and after the funding dried up they started hanging out with Blink 182 to smoke weed and pat each other on the back for being crazy alien believers.  These aren’t sound scientific minds that are capable of analyzing the evidence available.  Those people exist and I’m certain their analyses do as well, but no one gets to see them.&lt;p&gt;I struggle to even come up with narratives as to why this specific case would be made public.  Perhaps the intelligence agencies knew it wouldn’t be possible to cover up so the best they can do is release the evidence that was expected to make its way to the public and say nothing about it officially.  If I put on a tinfoil hat I could say that the AATIP’s purpose was to instill doubt that aliens exist, but that would imply that they do exist.  It seems that the intelligence agencies are behaving like they want to give as little information as possible about it.  I can’t imagine the AATIP was made top-down.  It appears to just be a congressman’s publicity stunt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>willis936</author><text>To add onto this:
Is this behavior reasonable for an alien species?  I think so.  It could be a probe to evaluate the behavior and technology of society on Earth.  They could detect military response times, if they get greeted with missiles, hugs, or observations, etc.  Keeping tabs on neighbors may be a good way to slowly initiate peaceful contact with another planet.&lt;p&gt;Another question to ask ourselves is “how much evidence is enough to convince ourselves that aliens exist?”  Namely: is this FLIR video enough?</text></comment>