This type of thing is called spectacle. It is designed to titillate and distract people from real political action and prevent people who are easily fooled from applying their attention and effort to things that actually effect their lives. The ability to direct attention is an ability that creates pacification.
This UFO stuff seems to frequently break into my scope of attention when there are big things happening politically.
Authoritarians also love the "occult" and the idea of aliens fit that category. Occult beliefs legitimize irrational behavior.
Oooooh yes. Several group chats I'm on with family or kids I knew growing up are blowing up with "See, I told you!" I blame 80s AM non-religious talk radio for this one.
Regardless, if you've not seen the existence of or any episode of Ancient Aliens (or Finding Bigfoot) you'll see what i'm saying: some of these spectacles are more for fun than for politics, because they can be outright funny.
Even putting aside the crazies that do passionately believe in this stuff, a lot of fairly regular people, who may not necessarily truly believe it, still think about it as a sort of "But what if it's true?" mindset, which still plays into the issue GP describes.
Search for "The Amalgamated Flying Saucer Club of America", there's a lot of discussion that these photos may have been a hoax. I'm not sure why these would be just getting release by National Archives now, perhaps as a distraction?
> I'm not sure why these would be just getting release by National Archives now, perhaps as a distraction?
Maybe, or maybe they wanted to avoid giving the content unearned credibility through concealment. The easiest way to turn a mystery into a nothingburger is to release it to the public.
> ... there's a lot of discussion that these photos may have been a hoax.
Yes, or sightings by people constitutionally unable to distinguish Venus from a UFO.
It's just culture. I'm glad the National Archives are able to preserve it for future generations, as nobody really knows when all our unofficial archives, all the FTP servers that have been running in a basement since 1994, finally quit.
Though, I'm not sure how good finishing technology was back then, this could have been faked.
I really wonder why we can't get a clear answer on whether these are really extraterrestrial or just advanced tech. One would imagine if it were a conspiracy that it would have leaked in full by now.
> These are known to be Paul Villa’s UFO photographs from 1964 and are part of a larger narrative where he claimed contact with extraterrestrial beings. [...]
>
> How these photographs wound up in the Goddard Space Flight Center records collection is unknown.
> Initial observations: narrow focal depth...object sharpness in front of trees implies it's small, around 8 to 12 in.
>
> Vented disc brake rotors were introduced in the 60s, patented in 1929. This looks like a vented disc brake rotor with a domed hubcap on top. Compare the images.
(Click through to either the Twitter thread or the StackExchange quotation-of-the-Twitter-thread to see the images of the original hubcap and the "UFO" side by side.)
It's obviously someone a few feet from the camera tossing the hubcap into the air.
When you focus a SLR camera "to infinity", ie. the maximum settable focus for distant objects, the lens has an actual physical distance at which things will still be focused. Usually it's like 50 feet from the camera. So when the camera lens is focused to infinity, things >= 50 feet away will be in focus.
Because the trees are slightly out of focus, the lens has been set shallower than infinity, which means the UFO is closer to the camera than the physical infinity (50'). It's physically impossible for an object more distant than the trees to be in focus without the trees being in focus.
That photo is so perfectly framed, I think it has to have been faked. I bet the "disk" was probably hung from a tree and the fishing wire was just invisible to the camera.
Look, the photographer just happened to be setting up a photo of a random spot in the woods. It was pure chance that a UFO entered the view, and stayed still enough to not distort in the photo in any way.
What do you mean by “clear answer”? How would you definitively prove this is fake or real?
Some photo might be proven to be eg distant lights or inconstant lighting… but a bespoke prop and old / bad cameras? we can only say “it looks super fake”
I don't think a scientist assumes a theory is false until it is proven true. I think a scientist thinks about how to capture data, and enough of it, to position evidence to a theory. By necessity that means the scientist must be open to the theory being either true or false before testing. But they must be willing to pre-register what the experiment would say. And, of course, healthy skepticism is required.
The scientific method requires replication, and there are events in the universe that are inherently long-tailed and leave little trace evidence. That doesn't make their observers crazy or pseudo-scientists. There are some weird things out in this wide universe of ours that happen on the tails of observability.
> There are some weird things out in this wide universe of ours that happen on the tails of observability.
Yes, that is true. And in science, we assume such things are not real until positive evidence leads us to a different conclusion. Consider the ether theory, the idea that an evanescent substance filled all of space and was responsible for the propagation of light. But because it had not been directly observed, scientists invoked the null hypothesis to assume it wasn't real. Tests then confirmed that it wasn't real, and this led to relativity theory.
> It's called the "null hypothesis." It's the gold standard of scientific experimental design.
I think this definition is tying too much epistemic certainty on the part of the scientist towards the null hypothesis versus the alternative hypothesis being tested, hence my disagreement to what I consider a view lacking nuance. In short, if the scientist has no reason to doubt the null hypothesis then there is no reason to test. So the scientist must first be willing to allow the null to be proven unlikely / rejected.
I don't think we're going to see any further agreement this deep in the semantics, so let's move forward understanding each other to be in general agreement on the metaphysical construction of the scientific method.
> And in science, we assume such things are not real until positive evidence leads us to a different conclusion
We assume them to be untestable, not necessarily false. Just unable to be tested. The scientific method only has three states: untested, agrees with available evidence, or rejected by available evidence. If no evidence, then untested.
String theory is a great example of this. Wonderfully mathematical and logical, but we haven't figured out how to test major components of it specifically yet that would distinguish it from alternative theories.
> In short, if the scientist has no reason to doubt the null hypothesis then there is no reason to test.
On the contrary, that's the point at which positive evidence may contradict the null hypothesis, assuming it exists. But the null hypothesis must be the default initial assumption.
My point is that if the scientist assumes anything but the null hypothesis a priori, it's not science, it's marketing. This is why the null hypothesis is the default initial position in any legitimate scientific investigation.
The alternative is to assume the truth of a theory and seek falsifying evidence. But this may require proof of a negative, which is frequently impossible. I can't prove Bigfoot's nonexistence, but this failure doesn't support Bigfoot's existence.
It’d be so interesting to correlate the occurrence object types with the sci-fi trends in contemporary trends books/movies. E.g. saucers are less trendy these days
> According to Meier, the Plejaren gave him permission to photograph and film their beamships so that he could produce evidence of their extraterrestrial visitations.
...but not photograph any of them, of course. These "Plejaren" sound suspiciously indistinct from Second Directorate goons.
It's all fake, just a prop to distract people with a poor judgment so the people with highest minds, like us, from raising a revolution against tyranny. Or sort of that.
There ain't no ET or alien vessels here. It's a cavalcade of distractions to baffle, befuddle, and bemuse the populace from focusing on the corruption, the lies, and the injustices.
If I was a conspiracy nut, I'd say that all the good stuff will already have been removed, the government is still hiding the truth, and that the lizard men walk amongst us.
I'm not one, and I still think that. Well, maybe not that last bit.
This type of thing is called spectacle. It is designed to titillate and distract people from real political action and prevent people who are easily fooled from applying their attention and effort to things that actually effect their lives. The ability to direct attention is an ability that creates pacification.
This UFO stuff seems to frequently break into my scope of attention when there are big things happening politically.
Authoritarians also love the "occult" and the idea of aliens fit that category. Occult beliefs legitimize irrational behavior.
Are you assuming people take this stuff seriously in the large, rather than just amusement?
Oooooh yes. Several group chats I'm on with family or kids I knew growing up are blowing up with "See, I told you!" I blame 80s AM non-religious talk radio for this one.
Absolutely, and if you don't think they do, you live in a great amount of privilege.
Well that's a wildly wrong guess.
Regardless, if you've not seen the existence of or any episode of Ancient Aliens (or Finding Bigfoot) you'll see what i'm saying: some of these spectacles are more for fun than for politics, because they can be outright funny.
It's not funny when your relatives or elderly family members unironically consider it/believe it.
Even putting aside the crazies that do passionately believe in this stuff, a lot of fairly regular people, who may not necessarily truly believe it, still think about it as a sort of "But what if it's true?" mindset, which still plays into the issue GP describes.
I have some news for you...
It's worse than you think.
oh come on, comrades, why the down-votes? I am with you
These are not new releases, here's Reddit from a year ago people discussing them: https://old.reddit.com/r/StrangeEarth/comments/1aru95c/these...
Search for "The Amalgamated Flying Saucer Club of America", there's a lot of discussion that these photos may have been a hoax. I'm not sure why these would be just getting release by National Archives now, perhaps as a distraction?
> I'm not sure why these would be just getting release by National Archives now, perhaps as a distraction?
Maybe, or maybe they wanted to avoid giving the content unearned credibility through concealment. The easiest way to turn a mystery into a nothingburger is to release it to the public.
> ... there's a lot of discussion that these photos may have been a hoax.
Yes, or sightings by people constitutionally unable to distinguish Venus from a UFO.
It’s amazing how something that has not resulted in any concrete examples or real world implications can cause such a hysteria for decades.
It's just culture. I'm glad the National Archives are able to preserve it for future generations, as nobody really knows when all our unofficial archives, all the FTP servers that have been running in a basement since 1994, finally quit.
[flagged]
Religion, team sports, and politics. Also, cold fusion and VR.
Add:
* Crypto
* AI
* GNU (shots fired, lol)
I keep waiting for something related to this one to be released:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash%E2%80%93Landrum_inciden...
Seems clear that it was some black program cold war nuclear propulsion vehicle that never saw the light of day.
Oh look. A flying saucer. Quick, get our worst camera.
Absolutely nuts: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/305558927
Though, I'm not sure how good finishing technology was back then, this could have been faked.
I really wonder why we can't get a clear answer on whether these are really extraterrestrial or just advanced tech. One would imagine if it were a conspiracy that it would have leaked in full by now.
That photo series in particular is well-debunked. See:
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/57629/whats-the...
> These are known to be Paul Villa’s UFO photographs from 1964 and are part of a larger narrative where he claimed contact with extraterrestrial beings. [...] > > How these photographs wound up in the Goddard Space Flight Center records collection is unknown.
https://xcancel.com/humansareindef1/status/17581524853055121...
> Initial observations: narrow focal depth...object sharpness in front of trees implies it's small, around 8 to 12 in. > > Vented disc brake rotors were introduced in the 60s, patented in 1929. This looks like a vented disc brake rotor with a domed hubcap on top. Compare the images.
(Click through to either the Twitter thread or the StackExchange quotation-of-the-Twitter-thread to see the images of the original hubcap and the "UFO" side by side.)
It's obviously someone a few feet from the camera tossing the hubcap into the air.
When you focus a SLR camera "to infinity", ie. the maximum settable focus for distant objects, the lens has an actual physical distance at which things will still be focused. Usually it's like 50 feet from the camera. So when the camera lens is focused to infinity, things >= 50 feet away will be in focus.
Because the trees are slightly out of focus, the lens has been set shallower than infinity, which means the UFO is closer to the camera than the physical infinity (50'). It's physically impossible for an object more distant than the trees to be in focus without the trees being in focus.
I freaking love the HN commenters and community. Thanks for sharing the takedowns with me.
That photo is so perfectly framed, I think it has to have been faked. I bet the "disk" was probably hung from a tree and the fishing wire was just invisible to the camera.
Look, the photographer just happened to be setting up a photo of a random spot in the woods. It was pure chance that a UFO entered the view, and stayed still enough to not distort in the photo in any way.
Don't spoil the magic!!!!!!
What do you mean by “clear answer”? How would you definitively prove this is fake or real?
Some photo might be proven to be eg distant lights or inconstant lighting… but a bespoke prop and old / bad cameras? we can only say “it looks super fake”
>How would you definitively prove this is fake or real?
What's old is new again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Meier#Photographs,_films...
Noted.
Also, I need better glasses -- the reminder is appreciated :)
> What do you mean by “clear answer”? How would you definitively prove this is fake or real?
Most UFO/UAP lore relies on the impossibility of proving a negative, which BTW is a recognized logical fallacy.
I normally say it this way:
I don't think a scientist assumes a theory is false until it is proven true. I think a scientist thinks about how to capture data, and enough of it, to position evidence to a theory. By necessity that means the scientist must be open to the theory being either true or false before testing. But they must be willing to pre-register what the experiment would say. And, of course, healthy skepticism is required.
The scientific method requires replication, and there are events in the universe that are inherently long-tailed and leave little trace evidence. That doesn't make their observers crazy or pseudo-scientists. There are some weird things out in this wide universe of ours that happen on the tails of observability.
> I don't think a scientist assumes a theory is false until it is proven true.
It's called the "null hypothesis." It's the gold standard of scientific experimental design.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis : "The null hypothesis (often denoted H0) is the claim in scientific research that the effect being studied does not exist."
> There are some weird things out in this wide universe of ours that happen on the tails of observability.
Yes, that is true. And in science, we assume such things are not real until positive evidence leads us to a different conclusion. Consider the ether theory, the idea that an evanescent substance filled all of space and was responsible for the propagation of light. But because it had not been directly observed, scientists invoked the null hypothesis to assume it wasn't real. Tests then confirmed that it wasn't real, and this led to relativity theory.
> It's called the "null hypothesis." It's the gold standard of scientific experimental design.
I think this definition is tying too much epistemic certainty on the part of the scientist towards the null hypothesis versus the alternative hypothesis being tested, hence my disagreement to what I consider a view lacking nuance. In short, if the scientist has no reason to doubt the null hypothesis then there is no reason to test. So the scientist must first be willing to allow the null to be proven unlikely / rejected.
I don't think we're going to see any further agreement this deep in the semantics, so let's move forward understanding each other to be in general agreement on the metaphysical construction of the scientific method.
> And in science, we assume such things are not real until positive evidence leads us to a different conclusion
We assume them to be untestable, not necessarily false. Just unable to be tested. The scientific method only has three states: untested, agrees with available evidence, or rejected by available evidence. If no evidence, then untested.
String theory is a great example of this. Wonderfully mathematical and logical, but we haven't figured out how to test major components of it specifically yet that would distinguish it from alternative theories.
> In short, if the scientist has no reason to doubt the null hypothesis then there is no reason to test.
On the contrary, that's the point at which positive evidence may contradict the null hypothesis, assuming it exists. But the null hypothesis must be the default initial assumption.
My point is that if the scientist assumes anything but the null hypothesis a priori, it's not science, it's marketing. This is why the null hypothesis is the default initial position in any legitimate scientific investigation.
The alternative is to assume the truth of a theory and seek falsifying evidence. But this may require proof of a negative, which is frequently impossible. I can't prove Bigfoot's nonexistence, but this failure doesn't support Bigfoot's existence.
That looks like some hubcaps hanging from the trees by a fishing line.
Yeah, modern sci-fi has embraced sharp aerodynamics so extensively that saucers now seem laughably fake.
Great catch. Shadows look off too -- shadow as presented looks like sun is late afternoon, but the grass looks closer to noon.
It’d be so interesting to correlate the occurrence object types with the sci-fi trends in contemporary trends books/movies. E.g. saucers are less trendy these days
Or advanced extraterrestrial tech :) How 'bout a photo from july 1975 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Meier#/media/File:Billy_...
> According to Meier, the Plejaren gave him permission to photograph and film their beamships so that he could produce evidence of their extraterrestrial visitations.
...but not photograph any of them, of course. These "Plejaren" sound suspiciously indistinct from Second Directorate goons.
The more interesting stuff is the stuff that spooks the Pentagon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos
Still not your concrete proof of alien craft, but the Navy FLIR footage has always spooked me a lot more than the 1960s Roswell-era stuff.
It's all fake, just a prop to distract people with a poor judgment so the people with highest minds, like us, from raising a revolution against tyranny. Or sort of that.
That one has to be faked. It matches the design of what people expected around that time, cars had the same aesthetic.
There ain't no ET or alien vessels here. It's a cavalcade of distractions to baffle, befuddle, and bemuse the populace from focusing on the corruption, the lies, and the injustices.
If I was a conspiracy nut, I'd say that all the good stuff will already have been removed, the government is still hiding the truth, and that the lizard men walk amongst us.
I'm not one, and I still think that. Well, maybe not that last bit.
[dead]
Ok. I got it. It's fake af. Why you mad, tho?