Hm, so roughly speaking, how would you break down the probabilities of some different explanations, given a generic UFO sighting? E.g. just a shadow or reflection, natural object in the sky, man-made stationary object, human-piloted airplane, drone, actually aliens? Is there some common sub-type of UFO sighting that you think has low probability of all non-drone explanations, even accounting for all the faults of human memory and character?
I don’t know enough about ‘generic UFO sightings’ to answer.
“actually aliens” seems very very unlikely – definitely not literally impossible tho.
My priors are that a lot of historical UFO sightings really were experimental aircraft. I’d expect some number were early drones too. Others seem to have definitely been, e.g. weather balloons.
Other sightings, particularly the relatively well-documented recent ones, seem very similar to ‘ball lightning’, which is also so little understood that it’s not even clear that it’s real. Assuming those observations are both accurate (e.g. the relevant ‘equipment’ was working correctly) and being interpreted accurately, they don’t seem to be drones, unless the drones themselves include novel propulsion systems (which is very plausible assuming the existence of such novel systems).
(And, as a a kind of reference point, ‘rogue waves’ seem to have been similarly so hard to study, until very recently, that their existence wasn’t entirely clear.)
Hm, so roughly speaking, how would you break down the probabilities of some different explanations, given a generic UFO sighting? E.g. just a shadow or reflection, natural object in the sky, man-made stationary object, human-piloted airplane, drone, actually aliens? Is there some common sub-type of UFO sighting that you think has low probability of all non-drone explanations, even accounting for all the faults of human memory and character?
I don’t know enough about ‘generic UFO sightings’ to answer.
“actually aliens” seems very very unlikely – definitely not literally impossible tho.
My priors are that a lot of historical UFO sightings really were experimental aircraft. I’d expect some number were early drones too. Others seem to have definitely been, e.g. weather balloons.
Other sightings, particularly the relatively well-documented recent ones, seem very similar to ‘ball lightning’, which is also so little understood that it’s not even clear that it’s real. Assuming those observations are both accurate (e.g. the relevant ‘equipment’ was working correctly) and being interpreted accurately, they don’t seem to be drones, unless the drones themselves include novel propulsion systems (which is very plausible assuming the existence of such novel systems).
(And, as a a kind of reference point, ‘rogue waves’ seem to have been similarly so hard to study, until very recently, that their existence wasn’t entirely clear.)