2004 USS Nimitz Tic Tac UFO FLIR footage (FLIR1)

Just looking into cases like the one below makes clear that there is indeed not much difference between highly qualified pilots or astronauts and ordinary people.
The main difference being the ability to pilot aircraft or to work in space; basically, they're good at what they've been trained for. I wouldn't want an "ordinary person" piloting the plane I'm sitting in!

But for example, there's no reason to assume they're better husbands or wives than ordinary people; and there's no reason to assume they're good UAP investigators. They might be, but it doesn't come with the training that makes them pilots!
 
You're making it sound like the skeptics' hypothesis is the unreasonable one out of the two options which, unlike the ufologist one, has plenty of priors in history. Let me remind you.

1. The Skeptics' Hypothesis:

Fravor's report is a sincere eyewitness report which adds to the mass of eyewitness reports from the general public as well as trained professionals, whereby the power of human imagination together with the brain's visual perception functions and unusual viewing conditions (such as parallax illusions and featureless objects), further informed by cultural fiction and myth, fills observational information gaps.

2. The Ufologists' Hypothesis:

Aliens.
I'm arguing that no matter what bits of data comes forth, skeptics will not take his verbal account as proof of Fravor encountering something of non human intelligent origins. Especially considering Fravor acknowledges there is no gun camera footage.

Or perhaps you disagree. Please give me an example of what it would take to convince you. What would change your mind?

If there is realistically no chance of anything coming to light that would vindicate Fravor's belief that that the encounter was with some sort of ET technology, then the skeptic's stance becomes effectively: Fravor was certainly mistaken, so at this point we are left speculating on what particular sequence of prosaic events unfolded to create the encounter.
 
Just looking into cases like the one below makes clear that there is indeed not much difference between highly qualified pilots or astronauts and ordinary people. The main difference is that pilots' errors can turn fatal quickly. For example, if they would start shooting at reflections from light sources on their own iPhones or let them lead them into risky flight maneuvers instead of just sensationalizing them on social media. Activities like Ryan Graves' are also not conducive to promoting a more critical awareness in this regard.

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/re...-aircraft-over-channel-islands-8-18-22.12616/
Do you have any evidence for your claim that there is "not much difference" between the two categories?

The fact that the first group is not infallible does not prove they are equivalent to the other group. The first category might make a particular mistake 5% of the time, and the other makes that mistake 65% of the time. Or perhaps its 1% and 90%, or 50/50.

I would love to see if any such studies exist between astronauts and fighter pilots compared to the general public when it comes to visual identification of aerial phenomena.
 
I'm arguing that no matter what bits of data comes forth, skeptics will not take his verbal account as proof of Fravor encountering something of non human intelligent origins. Especially considering Fravor acknowledges there is no gun camera footage.

....then the skeptic's stance becomes effectively: Fravor was certainly mistaken, so at this point we are left speculating on what particular sequence of prosaic events unfolded to create the encounter.

A verbal account from a single person can NEVER be considered "proof" of anything. No serious investigator doubts that. And the skeptic's position is not automatically that he was mistaken, it is that the sighting remains "Unidentified". It's the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" thing again. We would be remiss if we didn't run through all the prosaic circumstances once again, because the usual suspects, ranging from balloons to hallucinations, are things with which we are familiar. Thus they are always going to be more likely than an extraordinary object moving in ways that defy the laws of physics and attested to verbally by a single person.

Do not disparage investigators because they investigate.
 
I'm arguing that no matter what bits of data comes forth, skeptics will not take his verbal account as proof of Fravor encountering something of non human intelligent origins. Especially considering Fravor acknowledges there is no gun camera footage.

Yes. If all we have is a verbal account, we have no way to discern if it's:
  • A completely accurate account of what happened.
  • A misinterpretation of what happened.
  • A confabulation of what happened and various elements that have been added in repeated retellings.
  • An exaggeration of what happened.
  • A complete fabrication.
And note, even if the first one is correct, it still doesn't explain what was seen, it's just an accurate description of something strange.

EDIT: I crossed posts with @Ann K and said basically the same thing.
 
I'm arguing that no matter what bits of data comes forth, skeptics will not take his verbal account as proof of Fravor encountering something of non human intelligent origins.

Au contraire, my friend! I daresay most of us would be quite happy and convinced by good, clear footage of an alien ship backing up Fravor's claims -- undoctored footage that can clearly be established by a multidisciplinary group of impartial experts as featuring something not man-made. And hopefully available for us all to review. It's just that the evidence for UFOs invariably stops at anecdotal evidence, which scientifically is regarded as unreliable evidence, irrespective of scale and authority.

You are falsely assuming that the average 'skeptic' is, in theory, against the very idea of aliens whereas many of us are, in fact, sci-fi geeks of the highest order who'd love if a benevolent alien race would pay us a visit.

Where we differ from our fellow sci-fi enthusiasts on the ufologist side is in our upholding a scientific standard of truth for establishing something so extraordinary as alien visitations to be true.
 
Last edited:
I'm arguing that no matter what bits of data comes forth, skeptics will not take his verbal account as proof of Fravor encountering something of non human intelligent origins. Especially considering Fravor acknowledges there is no gun camera footage.
Can I take a stab at that one, even though you were conversing with somebody else? To me, eyewitness accounts are interesting but not really evidentiary barring associated hard data, for the simple reason that eyewitness accounts are so often inerror -- not just about UFO sightings, but about everything. People make mistakes in observation. Memories are fungible. Some people make up stories. Some people hallucinate. Pointing this out is not to say that this is the case for any particular witness of any particular event (Fravor maybe saw exactly what he reported and possibly made no mistakes and has had no "memory creep" since then.) But there is no way to know, just from the story, how accurate the story is. That being the case, NO eyewitness story can ever rise to the level of PROOF that there are Aliens flying around, or interdimnesional visitors, or any of the other UFOlogist hypotheses. The claim is too extraordinary to be proved by mundane eyewitness testimony evidence, that we know is of the sort to often be in error.

The stories told by Fravor et al of their sighting of whatever it was are interesting, but sadly they did not capture (so far as I know) corroborating evidence that the thing they saw did the extraordinary things they said that they saw it do. Attempts to tack on the Flir1 video as proof of the claims made about the Fravor incident are not compelling -- the Flir1 target does not do anything extraordinary and may or may not be the same object, or even the same sort of object. Claims that radar data showed targets doing other things than what Fravor et al say they saw are similarly not compelling, especially since those claims also rely on what witnesses say, not on recorded verifiable data that we can analyze.

So Fravor's case remains fascinating as a story, but has no important value in an attempt to demonstrate Aliens (or much of anything else.)

That's my opinion, your mileage may vary.


Or perhaps you disagree. Please give me an example of what it would take to convince you. What would change your mind?
Convince me that Fravor saw an alien spaceship? I am afraid that ship has sailed, the opportunity to capture useful data is years (coming up on decades now) in the past. But IF he had shot some great video footage that confirmed all of his claims, he might have established to some degree that he saw something extraordinary (I am not sure that his claims support one UFO theory over another -- they don't seem, on the face of them and accepted as 100% accurate, to prove any one of the possible extraordinary theories that have been applied to UFOs over any of the others (Aliens, time traveling humans, beings from another dimension, demons, etc.) But he might have at least proven that it was nothing easily explained by known phenomena or known tech.

The problem is, when we do get data, it is always in the low information zone, does not support claims of extraordinary, impossible flight characteristics, and the like.* For some reason, UFOs only seem to do that sort of stuff when there is no supporting video being shot, or other hard data being collected. Claims that FINALLY a UFO video has been taken that shows a nearby UFO, clearly visible, doing the popular impossible UFO things and it will be made public next week never seem to result in anything more than another LIZ target that "you have to look really closely to see them." That pattern is old enough now to seem significant.

Dang I'm a long winded old coot. I yield the floor to the next poster! :)



*Close up videos showing amazing UFOs in detail pretty much invariably turn out to be hoaxed. Maybe someday that will change and we'll get some compelling footage.
 
I'm arguing that no matter what bits of data comes forth, skeptics will not take his verbal account as proof of Fravor encountering something of non human intelligent origins. Especially considering Fravor acknowledges there is no gun camera footage.
no, the take is to assign a likelihood based on a probability funnel

example: if you say you have seen a black cat, then you could still be mistaken but we all know that black cats exist and its quite easy to identify them. theres a high probability that you are right.

if you say you have seen a zebra in your garden but you live in norway, then theres a pretty low probability that this is correct even though we all know that zebras do exist.

if fravor says he has seen a physics defying craft from out of space then theres an extremely low probability for him to be right. we have zero evidence for the physics defying and also alien part. the probability is not zero, but theres a plethora of options that is more likely because of it. in fact it would be more reasonable to assume he has seen a white zebra riding on a pill shaped balloon (yes this sounds extremely absurd and unlikely so go figure).

thats why its so important to have more compelling hard evidence the more outlandish the anecdotal evidence is.

thats the skeptics take
 
A verbal account from a single person can NEVER be considered "proof" of anything. No serious investigator doubts that. And the skeptic's position is not automatically that he was mistaken, it is that the sighting remains "Unidentified". It's the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" thing again. We would be remiss if we didn't run through all the prosaic circumstances once again, because the usual suspects, ranging from balloons to hallucinations, are things with which we are familiar. Thus they are always going to be more likely than an extraordinary object moving in ways that defy the laws of physics and attested to verbally by a single person.

Do not disparage investigators because they investigate.
I'm not disparaging anyone here.

I agree fully that Fravor's account can not be verified or taken as proof. Nor should it be.

The whole thing is a dead end as far as "proof" of ETs go IMO.
 
Au contraire, my friend! I daresay most of us would be quite happy and convinced by good, clear footage of an alien ship backing up Fravor's claims -- undoctored footage that can clearly be established by a multidisciplinary group of impartial experts as featuring something not man-made. And hopefully available for us all to review. It's just that the evidence for UFOs invariably stops at anecdotal evidence, which scientifically is regarded as unreliable evidence, irrespective of scale and authority.

You are falsely assuming that the average 'skeptic' is, in theory, against the very idea of aliens whereas many of us are, in fact, sci-fi geeks of the highest order who'd love if a benevolent alien race would pay us a visit.

Where we differ from our fellow sci-fi enthusiasts on the ufologist side is in our upholding a scientific standard of truth for establishing something so extraordinary as alien visitations to be true.

I'm referring to the Fravor case specifically. As I stated in another post, I feel there is nothing that can be brought forth as "proof" as required by as skeptic, IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE :)

Undeniable proof for us, if it ever comes, will have to come from some other avenue or a new event.
 
Convince me that Fravor saw an alien spaceship? I am afraid that ship has sailed, the opportunity to capture useful data is years (coming up on decades now) in the past.
Yes we both agree, this case is going nowhere as far as "proof" goes. If Fravor and Dietrich did have good quality gun camera footage from different vantage points, that would certainly help though!
 
I'm referring to the Fravor case specifically. As I stated in another post, I feel there is nothing that can be brought forth as "proof" as required by as skeptic, IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE :)

Sure, but it has nothing to do with being fanatically opposed to the idea that aliens haven't visited us, as some ufologists would like to paint the 'skeptics'. We are just more cautious with anecdotes for a good reason, and more interested in hard evidence. It's not personal. :)
 
I'm referring to the Fravor case specifically. As I stated in another post, I feel there is nothing that can be brought forth as "proof" as required by as skeptic, IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE :)

Undeniable proof for us, if it ever comes, will have to come from some other avenue or a new event.
We all agree. But this is contentious:
If there is realistically no chance of anything coming to light that would vindicate Fravor's belief that that the encounter was with some sort of ET technology, then the skeptic's stance becomes effectively: Fravor was certainly mistaken,
It's the part in italics that's contentious.

I'd agree to "Fravor was probably mistaken", but I'd like to have a better idea of what he saw before I change my belief to "certainly". But the chance that we find bits of information that corroborate this reading is rather higher than the other one. For example, we might find:
• a ship log placing the Louisville (or a secret submarine) on the spot of the white water disturbance
• gun camera footage from Dietrich's F-18 that we can process against a wave background to determine possible trajectories for the TicTac

What we actually have are several witness accounts that, although not independent, still conflict on essential parameters of the sighting. If you're trying to prove ET from those, the cards are stacked against you from the start. That's why the ufologists are hoping so hard that the US has an actual alien spacecraft in their possession that many of them turn into conspiracy theorists—and if there is a higher justice, the ones who push people down that rabbit hole won't have a fun time in the afterlife.

I would absolutely not be surprised if the belief that the US holds ET spacecraft has driven some people to believe that lies and deception are justified to bring about their public release.

But the Nimitz encounter is relatively benign. We all agree that some Navy flight crews and radar operators witnessed something they could not explain. But with two decades passed and no first contact scenario, the chance that it was aliens grows slimmer each day.
 
Do you have any evidence for your claim that there is "not much difference" between the two categories?
All I wanted to say was that pilots have no better judgment than anyone else, unless it is directly concerned with what they are highly qualified for. The invalid authority argument is used very often in these cases, but it simply does not work. There are many examples of this, like this one. And even such individual anecdotes are enough to refute the invalid argumentation. This does not require comprehensive statistics. The closer such pilots position themselves near public UAP discussions, the more unfortunate the result becomes for them, of course, especially since they not only serve their shortcomings on the presentation plate, but also document how unreflected their theses are, which are dismantled at Metabunk within a very short time. In these cases doubts are allowed as to whether they are really familiar with navigation and basic concepts. Here, every second user immediately finds out whether a flight has crossed other trajectories and which planes, satellites or stars were in the field of vision. But some pilots do not seem to be willing or able to do so. On this occasion, I also remember Chris Lehto, who did not know the principle of depth of field, but performed embarrassing nonsense in front of his own running camera.
 
any news or progress with the Nimitz case?
has it yet been officially debunked by the government as a mundane object?
 
both. i remember Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO's head, saying that a new UAP report was about to be published by the end of last year. so did that happen? did his team find out what the tic-tac was?
 
both. i remember Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO's head, saying that a new UAP report was about to be published by the end of last year. so did that happen? did his team find out what the tic-tac was?
The report has not yet been published (should be soon). But the official story on Nimitz is that they don't have the info to adequately investigate it.
 
Back
Top