They're not, but they're also somewhat orthogonal to "UFO culture." You're describing a philosophical/sociopolitical discussion that isn't really informed by a blip on a grainy video frame.

The question that's more relevant to UFOs, in my opinion, is "Why would these aliens, with their unimaginably superior technology, travel all the way here and reveal themselves in such asinine ways?" Did they intend to come all this way to do some cryptic and spooky display for a small number of people? Did they simply slip up and briefly drop their cover?

I just don't see it. I fully believe that, if there were aliens out there with such capabilities, and they came to earth, they would either conceal themselves fully or reveal themselves intentionally (and not just to a handful of people in a remote area).

It’s definitely possible to imagine a scenario where a handful of people or “the government” somehow witnessed the only fleeting evidence of its existence in our atmosphere, but it still seems exceedingly unlikely.

Btw, i think you may have meant to put credible in quotes, otherwise it's an oxymoron... as, in "Credible ufos are actually psyops."

I'm confident a lot of information is disinformation I think that your hypothesis that most or all is is probably false and maybe you can see they too if you examine the range of documents in the CIA FOIA reading room, the testimony of people, the work required to create all of these different documents in different formats with all of this different information about people's names and departments from the correct historical time period the correspond to you know correct historical designations and departments, it just seems way too much work for it to make sense. What are they getting from this? I think you need a credible explanation of the payoff to justify such an enormous investment of manpower and time.

From another view, if you have the standard where way you claim that the ROI of remote viewing programs was so low there was no point to them (when in fact there's declassified documentation of them being a reliable intelligence source commensurate with other sources, as well as it easily observable reality of various subreddits dedicated to people practicing this and getting results) then it seems doubly true that you know the return on investment of such a massive disinfo program, where there is no documentation of payoff and there's no obvious payoff, is unimaginably low.

it's basically a sort of insane elaboration that doesn't pass the Occam's razor test the simplest explanation is that these are simply reports of real things that happened. so definitely there will be disinformation because that makes sense from a narrative management point of view but I think it's becoming crazier and crazier to deny the simple and obvious explanation that all of this documentation describes something real.

However....One thing I do wonder about though, and I think is a bit odd is why is all of this so-called UFO and disclosure information promoted by mostly white American men. Where are the women where are the black people (besides Billy Carson) where are the Asian people where are the Chinese coming out with their disclosure information...that seems weird to me but I think if you wanted a credible program you would probably you know enlist people from other countries just like you know regular you know counterintelligence disinformation campaigns do. So it's weird to me that it's so heterogeneous. if there is a secret space program where are all the female whistleblowers coming forward.

You can try it yourself, there's subreddits for it where you can learn much more.

For CIA documentation, search FOIA reading room for "PROJECT CENTER LANE"

Here's a quote from a special access program briefing transcript[1]:

Over 85% of our operational missions have produced accurate target information. Even more significant, approximately 50% of the 700 missions produced usable intelligence.

Note that 50% is not "no better than chance" because the data produced are not binary selections, but things that other intelligence sources give, such as structure layouts, facility purposes, machine blueprints, site and personnel locations.

The FOIA documentation is overwhelming in its confirmation of this as an intelligence sensor on par with other sources, which leads me to believe that the AIR report (which you can also search for online) was partially disinfo designed to soften the blow of releasing that this is possible, and I'm quite sure that government and corporate use of psi continues to this day. Perhaps the FOIA release was also part of a limited hangout designed to yield some control over the narrative and provide a pretext for dismissal to protect ongoing classified programs.

Here's a MS Strategic Intelligence thesis from the Defense Intelligence College that gives a good overview:

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00789R0026002...

[1]: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R0017003...

I'm not really qualified to read through CIA papers. People who are seem to not agree with you.

If remote viewing works, wouldn't all major companies have departments full of viewers spying on competitors?

I'll note that the James Randi prize has not been won.

I've never seen a single indication of remote viewing and I've never seen any such claims hold up. I know of no mechanism that would allow remote viewing. Null hypothesis and Occam's razor points me to dismiss claims of remote viewing.

Experts from CIA have apparently researched this, found nothing and closed the project. The James Randi prize has not been won.

If remote viewing was possible, why are we not seeing the results?

That's me thinking, like you asked for. On the other hand, I don't see any actual evidence from you. Do you have any?

Do you have an opinion on what 2+3 equals?

"The Stargate Project was terminated and declassified in 1995 after a CIA report concluded that it was never useful in any intelligence operation. Information provided by the program was vague and included irrelevant and erroneous data, and there was reason to suspect that its project managers had changed the reports so they would fit background cues." This is not the final nor the only word on it. After many reports lauding how effective it was, it was terminated? Seems more likely it continues in a special access program, and the release was either to shake up the personnel structure that controlled it, or the reason I stated in my previous comment.

I'm not really qualified to read through CIA papers. Then you're not qualified to be credible nor have an opinion, if you choose to not look at the evidence for and against evenly. This seems like a lazy pretense to avoid looking at information that challenges your preexisting biases. In other words, you're choosing to make yourself a victim to confirmation bias. That makes what you say not very credible.

People who are seem to not agree with you. I disagree, and since you're not qualified to "read" these papers (which are created by the CIA, they are from various service branches), you're not qualified to say who is or who isn't qualified, right? So...who disagrees? Plenty of people agree with me, plenty of military people with first hand experience of these results agree. So if you're standard for belief is people and "qualified" people agree with me, then you have it. This seems pretty like a pretty bogus and lazy dismissal, "invoking authority" to hide your desire to stay within your preexisting bias. Confirmation bias.

If remote viewing works, wouldn't all major companies have departments full of viewers spying on competitors? If intelligence collection works, wouldn't all major companies have departments full of corporate spies spying on competitors? Is this how it works? I think they contract it out, I guess the same for RV, but probably less because "people are reluctant to believe it" even when shown it works, as you seem to be demonstrating.

I'll note that the James Randi prize has not been won. Which may not prove anything? Why close the prize? Perhaps he didn't want to pay it. Or it could have been a charity to people like yourself who want a very comforting (but not very informative) dismissal, instead of looking at the data. I had a prize open for 10 Million dollars for the first alien life known to humankind to prove that it really exists, but no aliens came to claim it, therefore humans are alone in the universe. Correct? Of course not.

So what happened here?

You asked me do I believe RV is real. I said unequivocally yes and gave you multiple resources to not only read straight away but to find out more, including going to a subreddit and seeing regular people trying it for themselves and getting results, which I encouraged you to also do. And instead of responding to, being open to, or curious, or even doing something, about that very generous offer of information and time I made you, you decided to ignore all of that supporting evidence (under the weak and pathetic excuse of saying you're not qualified to read it ~~ then of course you're not qualified to read Wikipedia and decide against it, either right?), and remain where it seems you are comfortable -- which appears to be a preexisting bias against believing this. So what have you demonstrated with your choices here? Confirmation bias in action.

It's very common, and a very predictable reaction. It makes sense as a defensive reaction to protect you from investing time, or belief in something which you fear may not be true, and may expose you to social ridicule. But at what point does that useful skepticism reach the point of diminishing returns where you need to stick your head in the sand and live in a made up fantasy world delusion where you have to manufacture excuses just so you can ignore evidence and shut your eyes against the truth? When do you choose comfort over knowing more? Confirmation bias.

Your fear to open up to this data, and your preference to remain in your confirmation bias, does not have any relation to the reality of RV, and obviously your choice to react like that doesn't mean RV is not true. You were given evidence that supports a claim you seem to not want to believe, and you ignored it. This is confirmation bias. This means your opinions about this are not credible, and one reason they are not credible is because you have not yet invested the time in investigating them honestly.

I guess you like playing innocent and trying to pick on true believers to try to get a rise out of them, because that makes you feel people are paying attention to you? So predictable, and easy right? No skin in the game tho? The reason I didn't address your points yesterday is because it seemed to be you were just doing precisely this, so I deliberately didn't give you the reaction you wanted. And I felt satisfied when it seemed you were incensed with my refusal to play your little game, and I instead dismissed your replies with even handed positivity. Moreover, it seemed you were questioning without making the effort to learn and be open to the data I shared and without really caring about the topic, so I wasn't going to reward your dishonesty and contempt for a serious topic with more informative responses when you'd already shown your contempt for this. The reason I'm putting it here now is for other readers who drop by in future, and your future self, if you become better (or your current self, if you want to learn how to improve) :) ;p xx

It's not my problem (and it says nothing of the quality of the data or the reality of this) if you want to remain in your confirmation bias when you have evidence in front of your eyes, and refuse to see it. Neither does your keeping your eyes closed prove there's no light in the world. You can pretend that's "someone else's fault" for not "proving" it to you, when in fact that's your responsibility for refusing to see the data, and choosing to keep your eyes closed. If you're going to do that, I think you should at least own it, rather than weakly trying to blame it on someone else by pretending there's no evidence, when it's just your responsibility. And if you do want to treat your mind this way (with confirmation bias) then be careful that you don't attack other people or be mean to them just because you're choosing to stay in your preexisting comfortable bias, because that unjustified meanness would be extremely bad for your karma. Just know that it's your responsibility if you think that way, and own it and don't try to incorrectly blame anyone else. Your choice to belief. To investigate. It's your mind, I'm not telling you what to do with it, because it's your life. I'm pointing out the context, the larger context, so hopefully you can make choices that work for you better in future. All the best of luck with that and have a great and a wonderful 2021! :) ;p xx

After having read Roadside Picnic, I'm inclined to disagree. If sufficiently advanced aliens ever happened upon us they might treat us as we treat ants in our backyards—that is, they don't really notice or care for us at all.

1) I don’t think the analogy of ambling around our backyards holds for space travel. Space is vast and largely empty, it would be astronomically unlikely for anyone to casually wander over to earth from another star or galaxy.

2) We only treat ants that way because we already know about them. People have noticed them and studied them at great length. A person who doesn’t know that other animals exist on earth would probably be incredibly fascinated by them and likely try to communicate with them.

Maybe if we inhabited space significantly we would find there's a lot going on between the stars

We're likely to be approximately several tens of thousands orders of magnitude below the advancement of any supposed "visitors". Us being a threat is unlikely to be even a single virtual particle of thought in their intragalactic quantum brains.

What's feeding your intuition here? I wouldnt have thought they'd likely be _that_ advanced. But I'm not sure where tens of thousands of orders of magnitude puts them on e.g. the Kardashev scale, and I'm sure being a huge Star Trek fan has affected my own intuitions :)

So by the time a race gets space faring and solves FTL travel, it's likely they're at least a good step onto that exponential intelligence curve. Hence a vague estimate of "tens of thousands of orders of magnitude".

For example, as is we should be capable of building a GPT-human within 20 years (1). About the same time frame that, if we put all our effort into it, it would take for us to barely colonize another planet in our solar system. Given another 20 years and we've got an AI that's 1000x more intelligent than us.

I see our trajectory as hitting that exponential curve before we even get out of this solar system. So I just imagine any potential "visitors" to our planet are much further along.

(1) This is calculated using Moore's law: how many doubles of compute will it take before GPT-3 can be naively scaled to the estimated number of parameters of a human brain. That doesn't necessarily imply human level intelligence, but our studies so far indicate that there's strong reason to believe that GPT-human will be something approximating 1000x smarter than GPT-3. Human or not, that's terrifyingly intelligent. Remember that Transformer like architectures are the ones that "solved" protein folding last year. And none of this calculation takes into account the potential for continued improvements to architectures and efficiency over that time span. So while I don't think GPT-human will start an AI apocalypse in 20 years, I do think GPT-human will be better than every other human on this planet at doing ... AI research. And that's where the spark of singularity begins.

That being said, my bet is on the side that most species send AI to different solar systems before biological ones arrive.

Seems a strange position to take. Look at our own case. Do we evaluate "un-contacted/lost" tribes in the Amazon to see if they may pose a risk to the current Global Order? No, because that would be absurd. They are so far behind technologically that they pose about as much of a threat as a troop of chimps do. For galactic scale civilizations the difference in capabilities is probably at least as extreme as that.

The other question is why not just domesticate us and what kind of evolutionary impact does domestication have on a species? As someone who "educates," horses and dogs to live in an inescapable human dominion, in doing so, I shape them into something other than what they are. They have good lives and find joy, but there is a responsibility I have they will almost never see. The best I can personally do is evolve my own understanding and various virtues and to relieve their suffering where I comprehend it. I would hope an alien species would be a little further along than most of us on that front, but I'd say the analogies are useful.

In his books, an enlightened species "uplifts" an inferior one that has potential and after being helped...they sortof serve a period of time as pets/servants until they demonstrate that they can be part of galactic civilization.

Humans blunder into all of this by accident when they begin exploring space. Normally the knowledge of physics required for space travel is a side-effect of being uplifted. It's not discovered, it's taught. But we didn't do it the normal way.

If I remember correctly humans after learning this is sortof how it's done begin "uplifting" dolphins. The uplift process involves genetic engineering and education, etc.

One of the core mysteries in the books for the other enlightened species out there is did someone uplift humans?

It's been a while so I probably butchered that.

But Iran, short of nuclear weapons, is essentially at exactly the same Technological level as the rest of the world. Humanity can barely get to our own Moon reliably so to think we are even remotely close technologically to civilizations capable of FTL travel or something similar is silly.

Bear in mind that intervention doesn't have to be obvious. In our current networked world, there's a lot which a more-advanced-than-us group or civilisation could do without needing to reveal themselves as such. ;)

How hard would it be for a super advanced society to insert a media network that's all basically ai-generated people? We already have deep fakes, imagine the tech they might have that's deep fakes after 50 generations...

They could control us from a small satellite without needing to come anywhere near us,just by controlling what we see, think, or hear on the television.

I like the idea of some super advanced society trying to manipulate our political process but all they need is the ability to wire transfer some cash to actual humans.

Even that's pretty overt. It should be entirely possible to change the course of political events by leaking damaging info at appropriate times.

... and good luck with the various governments who'd want to extradite and throw them in jail. ;)

I agree the mere appearance of an advanced civilization could be a corrupting influence on the soon-to-be space faring savages, but then again the brutes might have other more pressing character flaws. At the same time maybe it would make sense for the advanced civilization to contact them in a covert manner so that there is sort of plausible deniability or non-verifiability to seed the ideas and create some sort of influence but limit the impact, which itself is a strategy which could create a sort of corrupt back channel between the terrestrial population and the advanced influencers.

But judging from the way that state departments handle these things it seems that early and persistent outreach, both covert and overt, and infiltration, and a mix of carrots (advanced tech, trade?) and sticks (erasure?) is the preferred method of maintaining some sort of control and relationship to manage the emerging threat or at least try to guide the development in a manner which the advance civilization sees as promoting whatever values are interests that it has.

Following the track your ideas lay out, seems if there were others out there that we're civic minded in a cosmic sense, they wouldn't adopt a hands off approach

If anything, we live in a galactic nature preserve.

Perhaps the world is highly valued in terms of its bio-diversity and life-supporting resources. There's a possibility that native civilization like us are being monitored and on some level "protected" from conquests if they show they're responsible and take care of their own world.

But if the native civilization continue to destroy their own world, then all bets are off. More responsible and structured civilizations could be granted the right to intervene and potentially take over.

In other words, the more self-sufficient, ecologically responsible and wise we are, the more a civilization like us would be able to avoid this intervention.

However, nowhere else in the universe have they come across music like ours. They are madly obsessed with it and dare not intervene in our affairs, lest they taint the source.

I have absolutely no evidence for this. I just like the idea that Freddie Mercury just might have been an intergalactic superstar.