What you're ignoring is that now we have orders of magnitude more data (e.g., the YouTube video you mention) but still no more signal. Just like it was in 1970s, the strongest we've got is still "that's neat and I can't explain it".

This is like "God of the gaps" theology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

The claimed phenomenon keeps retreating to exactly fit into the gaps of our ignorance. And it will always keep retreating, because filling in the unknown with quasi-anthropomorphic entities is what humans have been doing since long before they invented Zeus and Thor.

Is it possible it's all UFOs or angels or Huginn and Muninn running errands for Odin? Sure. But there is no more reason to favor one explanation over the other. And the world is full of infinite things we don't have enough data to explain.

Why is that particular bird outside your window right now? Why is it singing the song it does? One explanation is that space aliens are using it to spy on you; the birdsong is how it communicates to coordinate observations with other birds. Maybe the iPhone 11 just isn't good enough to show the construction flaws in the feather patterns that would prove it too is a UFO.

But that theory is exactly as valid as "the explanation for this video is UFOs" and we should treat them with equal weight.

I will just start by saying that I think UFO stuff is interesting, but I am not convinced it's aliens. Just fun to read up on every few years.

With that said, I don't know how we will get beyond "that's neat and I can't explain". My belief is these UFO's are man made or natural phenomena. In order to fully explain them all, it requires us to know what is man made (disclosure from governments), and then study and understand the natural phenomena.

If this was actually aliens, then I don't think we will get past the "this is neat and I can't explain" unless they want us to. The way I reason with it is that it is the equivalent of if we time traveled a fighter jet or submarine to the 14th century. People back then would have no way to reason or prove what they were seeing unless we landed those vehicles and demonstrated to them. Even then, they would probably think the machine were a creation of pure evil or something.

We will never get beyond "that's neat and I can't explain" because there will always be liminal events.

Your "it could be aliens" argument applies exactly as well to fairies, angels, demons, demi-gods, wizards, Satan, time travelers, humans from other dimensions, etc. If you weight one of them more highly than the others, you should examine why. But the answer won't be in the evidence.

What you're ignoring is that "signal" is in the interpretation. You're blind to that. You can crank up data, and wind down your "signal" to confirm your existing biases. In fact that's what you need to do to preserve your "no unexplained" belief system. And that's what you see, people reaching for every more crazy explanations to pretend they didn't see what they saw: "the pilots hallucinated, and the battlegroup sensors all hallucinated, at the same time, repeatedly, over a few months"

I like the liminal theory but this isn't the same thing.

Nah. As I mentioned, I believe alien life is very likely to exist somewhere in the universe. I'd be fucking thrilled if it were to drop by for a visit. Fairies and wizards and dragons and whatnot would be cool too. But that doesn't prevent me from seeing that all of these have been on the margins for a long time, and continue to be on the margins despite the massive increase in our ability to document things over the last couple centuries.

That part of you wants to believe in alien visitors, seems to be independent of the priors you have (about the impossibility of this) that filters your interpretation of the data. I think that's normal. People's ideas do not need to be self-consistent and can "contain multitudes".

To extend the pirate rapists example from my other answer. Maybe you'd never known a pirate that had raped a person, but I think if you knew someone who told you that story, and you'd heard other people had similar experiences, you'd certainly believe them.

Or maybe not pirates but Trump supporters. Or whatever group fit your priors for likely/payoff for you to do this. So the "aliens are not a smart possibility" here is just an interpretation skewed by the way you want to read signal in the evidence.

It's equal that we can look at the same things and come to different conclusions. That's diversity of opinion and experience. But maybe you haven't even looked at the same things. Certainly we look at them in different ways.

I believe aliens are here. But I'm not saying this Navy evidence points to that definitely. I'm saying it doesn't rule it out. It's smart to keep open to it. I'd say the preponderance of witness evidence over decades without a doubt points to that they are here. Does this evidence prove it? No to me. But I know it. It's what I believe based on my own knowledge and experiences.

You have a different belief is normal. I don't think either of us can claim to be "right" on this topic re evidence (tho about the solar system, what do you think about those weird obelisks? structures on the moon? NASA's history of censoring space photos? Lights on Ceres, on Phobos, on Luna?)

In one view, the lack of solid widely accepted data is why there's so much "meat" to be argued about, but actually I don't think that's the meat, that's just reaching the ground consensus that people will reach different conclusions and I think as long as they do so with an open mind to the evidence that's valid.

I do think you have to admit that what you say about it comes not from evidence, but from your interpretation of it. It's not proven either way, it's just your belief that it's so. And that's all that matters so far right.

Also cellphone cameras didn't generally do well in low light. "Fuzzy unfocused blob of light" is a whole genre of UFO videos.

This may be becoming less of an issue with the newest generation of cameras.

It will not become less of an issue, because better cameras just push the liminal bubble out farther. There will always be something far enough away to be ambiguous, and that will be the new proof of UFOs. That is how it has gone for decades of improvement in recording technology.