I completely agree that the Phoenix lights were weird. I don't know what they were, I don't think they were birds, but I also don't think they were a big black alien triangle.

Neverthless, the military does sometimes test classified aircraft in view of civilians. And they have been known to use or even encourage UFO sightings as misinformation to cover up their activity.

Fiction has to make sense, but reality doesn't always have to make sense.

And yet you're refusing to believe in the "reality" (hypothetical) of an alien ship visit, because it doesn't make sense (to you... and possibly to me). Probably because (among other things), we think FTL travel is impossible (... we think... cue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive) which makes any visitation from realistically far away essentially impossible or at least highly impractical ("cryosleep" for centuries, etc.)

And so a sensible person seeks (perhaps justifiably) prosaic explanations for everything and automatically excludes any hypothesis without a prosaic explanation (with the incredibly audacious conceit of assuming we already understand enough about the universe to make such assumptions), while the fantastical person, not as bound by the need for evidence, can wildly speculate (which would of course include nonhuman intelligences somehow visiting us over distances that are insurmountable to us currently, but might also include basically, well, anything, since without the hard-evidence requirement, you're free to get creative)

I think both of these points exist as extremes on a continuum and that they're both wrong in some capacity. I think pragmatism and reasoning and rationality are a good basis, however... just, limiting, as well.

We might advance a bit on the evidence front here if there was a scientific way to evaluate mass eyewitness testimony (individual eyewitness testimony has come under fire recently https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-..., but perhaps, if you multiply the number of witnesses, the errors will tend to cancel each other out and you might end up with something more like Evidence with a capital E. (This would be useful in far more areas than mere UFO observation, of course.)

This is a really cohesive statement of the opinion I have about it, thanks. It always surprises me to meet people that can't push their internal boundaries to even think about the possibility. The kind of thinking that if humans haven't done it before -- and taken plenty of pictures! -- it can't possibly happen. The same person that thinks, "Well, since nobody has eaten all the stars in the galaxy for computational power, aliens can't possibly exist," despite the fact that we can't even generate the kinds of radio signals that would be needed for our own receivers to pick them up beyond a handful of light years. I will go to my grave dying to know how and why people think this way.

I'm not refusing to believe in the hypothetical reality. Of all the hypothetical realities I can conceive, "actually aliens" is the one I want most to be real. I want to live in that world, and not just see it in fiction.

What I am refusing to do is believe that hypothetical reality to be more likely than it is, based on the evidence (or lack thereof) presented and what it does or doesn't actually prove. I'm slotting it in the rank it deserves, which is slightly ahead of demons in likelihood but still less likely than everything else.

But yeah, the likelihood that it's aliens is not entirely zero.

You do? I don't know if I want to live in that world. Depends on how friendly the aliens are I suppose?

Fair enough!

Also, this came out moments ago. Timely? https://twitter.com/cnn/status/943105094345723904

Actually, when I see the videos of the Phoenix Lights, I immediately recognize plane-dropped flares. Every video I've ever seen of those lights appear to me to be plane-dropped flares. I spent many years in the infantry and deployed four times and I can tell you with certainty that's what they are. I think even the Air Force came out and said they had dropped flares that night.