Michio Kaku: burden of proof shifts on UFOs + Storm Area 51: just a few acting weird

[Magical Realist]

If the Null Hypothesis for skeptics is that nothing ever really happens, then they must live in a really boring universe!

That's an ignorant straw man. I just said skeptics don't "deny there being any phenomena at all". They readily agree that something happens.

And if "true believers" need to invent the incredible, then they must live really moribund lives. 

Can't very well claim the Null Hypothesis while agreeing that something happened. Sounds like cognitive dissonance to me. Having your cake and eating it too.

[billvon]

Why Michio Kaku is wrong about the UFO Burden of Proof & Navy Videos (response from skeptic community)
https://www.metabunk.org/why-michio-kaku...os.t10912/

EXCERPT: At the 2019 UFOlogy World Conference in Barcelona, Physicist Michio Kaku gave an address, in which he said [video]: Science is based on things that are testable, reproducible, and falsifiable. That's the criteria for science. Now what's the difference? In the past when people said they saw something, they saw something in the sky, that's not testable. That's not reproducible on demand. That's not falsifiable. It's anecdotal information. Maybe it's true. Maybe you did see something coming across the sky. But it's not enough for science. That's changed now. Two years ago, we now know from the United States Navy, that Navy pilots have videotaped, videotaped objects executing things that are impossible with ordinary commercial and military aircraft. I'll talk more about this in a few moments. So testability, we are now in the realm of testable. Testable encounters with some strange object in the sky.

[...] Also, during a Q&A, he was asked what brought him to the conference. He responded [video]: “Traditionally, when physicists were asked about extraterrestrials, their eyes would go rolling to the heaves and they would laugh. But that's because they assumed that aliens going between stars, it would take so long to go between stars. But the mistake they make is to assume these aliens are only 100 years ahead of us. Imagine that they could be 100,000 years more advanced than us. Then new laws of physics begin to enter into the picture, new laws of physics. Also, We’ve reached a turning point, I think. Usually, the believers have the burden of proof, they have to prove it. Now the burden of proof is on the government to disprove that they're not from outer space. You see science is based on things that are testable, reproducible, and falsifiable. (Falsifiable, [meaning] you can prove that it's not a hoax.) Now for the first time, we have testable evidence from the United States Navy. We have studied these military videotapes and we now can measure how fast they are, how high they are, we now have numbers we can play with. We now have testable evidence, but we don't yet have reproducible evidence, that is evidence we can touch. Therefore I tell everyone who may be kidnapped or abducted by flying saucer people, please steal something when you are kidnapped. We need you to steal as much as you can. Alien chips, alien paperclips, alien forks, knives, anything from a flying saucer.

The problem here is that he is wrong. The three videos do not show anything that is outside the bounds of human science. In fact, they most likely show rather banal things, viewed in an unusual way. There three vides: Flir1, Gimbal, and Go Fast

Flir1 (also called Nimitz, or TicTac) is a fuzzy blob in the distance. It does not move (although it jumps around when the camera changes zoom settings or does a gimbal lock correction). There's what looks like a final "zipping away at high speed" at the end of the video, but it's actually just the camera no-longer tracking the object, combined with a change in zoom that gives the illusion of speed. See:
https://www.metabunk.org/2004-uss-nimitz...ir1.t9190/

Gimbal is a saucer-shaped infrared glare. It rotates because the camera is rotating to counter gimbal lock. We can prove this because there are other light patterns in the sky that rotate at the same time the glare rotates. The video is consistent with a jet engine several miles away. it does not have any sudden acceleration. See:
https://www.metabunk.org/nyt-gimbal-vide...ect.t9333/

Go Fast is what looks like a cool object moving rapidly across the surface of the ocean. However, the angles and range on the screen allow us to triangulate the position and speed of the object. It turns out it's actually moving quite slowly (under 50 knots) and is quite high (13,000 feet). It does not accelerate at all. In fact, it most closely resembles a balloon, or possibly even a large gliding bird. See:
https://www.metabunk.org/go-fast-footage...oon.t9569/

Kaku describes these videos as "testable evidence", and we can in fact test hypotheses on them to see if they fit. However, Kaku seems not to have tested them himself and is instead relying on the ideas of others... (MORE)

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/5OXC0gdx-ME

[Syne]

If the Null Hypothesis for skeptics is that nothing ever really happens, then they must live in a really boring universe!

That's an ignorant straw man. I just said skeptics don't "deny there being any phenomena at all". They readily agree that something happens.

And if "true believers" need to invent the incredible, then they must live really moribund lives. 

Can't very well claim the Null Hypothesis while agreeing that something happened. Sounds like cognitive dissonance to me. Having your cake and eating it too.

See, you're completely ignorant about the null hypothesis. It's not an assumption that "nothing happens". It's the assumption that what does happen is mundane and ordinary until proven otherwise. It's like finding wine. The null hypothesis is that it was made in a vineyard or winery, not that someone converted it from water. It's not the assumption that no wine was found. And I've explained this to you countless times now, so your repeated ignorance is obviously willful, and likely caused by your own projected cognitive dissonance. After all, you're the one you believes in aliens and ghosts by not a god.

---

Why does Billvon keep quoting posts without adding any comment at all?

[Magical Realist]

Why Michio Kaku is wrong about the UFO Burden of Proof & Navy Videos (response from skeptic community)
https://www.metabunk.org/why-michio-kaku...os.t10912/

EXCERPT: At the 2019 UFOlogy World Conference in Barcelona, Physicist Michio Kaku gave an address, in which he said [video]: Science is based on things that are testable, reproducible, and falsifiable. That's the criteria for science. Now what's the difference? In the past when people said they saw something, they saw something in the sky, that's not testable. That's not reproducible on demand. That's not falsifiable. It's anecdotal information. Maybe it's true. Maybe you did see something coming across the sky. But it's not enough for science. That's changed now. Two years ago, we now know from the United States Navy, that Navy pilots have videotaped, videotaped objects executing things that are impossible with ordinary commercial and military aircraft. I'll talk more about this in a few moments. So testability, we are now in the realm of testable. Testable encounters with some strange object in the sky.

[...] Also, during a Q&A, he was asked what brought him to the conference. He responded [video]: “Traditionally, when physicists were asked about extraterrestrials, their eyes would go rolling to the heaves and they would laugh. But that's because they assumed that aliens going between stars, it would take so long to go between stars. But the mistake they make is to assume these aliens are only 100 years ahead of us. Imagine that they could be 100,000 years more advanced than us. Then new laws of physics begin to enter into the picture, new laws of physics. Also, We’ve reached a turning point, I think. Usually, the believers have the burden of proof, they have to prove it. Now the burden of proof is on the government to disprove that they're not from outer space. You see science is based on things that are testable, reproducible, and falsifiable. (Falsifiable, [meaning] you can prove that it's not a hoax.) Now for the first time, we have testable evidence from the United States Navy. We have studied these military videotapes and we now can measure how fast they are, how high they are, we now have numbers we can play with. We now have testable evidence, but we don't yet have reproducible evidence, that is evidence we can touch. Therefore I tell everyone who may be kidnapped or abducted by flying saucer people, please steal something when you are kidnapped. We need you to steal as much as you can. Alien chips, alien paperclips, alien forks, knives, anything from a flying saucer.

The problem here is that he is wrong. The three videos do not show anything that is outside the bounds of human science. In fact, they most likely show rather banal things, viewed in an unusual way. There three vides: Flir1, Gimbal, and Go Fast

Flir1 (also called Nimitz, or TicTac) is a fuzzy blob in the distance. It does not move (although it jumps around when the camera changes zoom settings or does a gimbal lock correction). There's what looks like a final "zipping away at high speed" at the end of the video, but it's actually just the camera no-longer tracking the object, combined with a change in zoom that gives the illusion of speed. See:
https://www.metabunk.org/2004-uss-nimitz...ir1.t9190/

Gimbal is a saucer-shaped infrared glare. It rotates because the camera is rotating to counter gimbal lock. We can prove this because there are other light patterns in the sky that rotate at the same time the glare rotates. The video is consistent with a jet engine several miles away. it does not have any sudden acceleration. See:
https://www.metabunk.org/nyt-gimbal-vide...ect.t9333/

Go Fast is what looks like a cool object moving rapidly across the surface of the ocean. However, the angles and range on the screen allow us to triangulate the position and speed of the object. It turns out it's actually moving quite slowly (under 50 knots) and is quite high (13,000 feet). It does not accelerate at all. In fact, it most closely resembles a balloon, or possibly even a large gliding bird. See:
https://www.metabunk.org/go-fast-footage...oon.t9569/

Kaku describes these videos as "testable evidence", and we can in fact test hypotheses on them to see if they fit. However, Kaku seems not to have tested them himself and is instead relying on the ideas of others... (MORE)

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/5OXC0gdx-ME

"Given an inability for a highly precise E-2C Hawkeye to not track this, its visually confirmed physics-defying and human-deadly inertial movements, and the fact that it was squawking no IFF – there is no way in hell this was a commercial jet of any kind, as Dunning claims. It went from subsonic to supersonic in seconds.11 Civil airliners do not do this. Dunning also conveniently ignores as well the pilot quotes from the clip “There’s a whole fleet of ’em, look on the SA”. To which another pilot replies “My gosh…!” This debunks the whole ‘effective combination of commonplace optical illusions’ and ‘most likely a commercial jet’ claims – as imperious thinking. A whole fleet of non-IFF transponding craft. But let’s not even go to the scientific method here, which involves ‘gathering intelligence’ before presuming to be competent to even ask a question, much less issue a conclusion. You learn early on – that with pretend skepticism, one can dispense with all these irritating rigors, because we have conclusions to promote, people and subjects to disparage. In addition, these observations occurred over weeks, and across multiple systems and observers, not just a 30 second misinterpretation of FLiR imagery. There is no fucking way, unless one is in a religious terror over this issue and is a complete dipshit, that one would declare this to be a ‘conventional aircraft’ – even in an armchair debunking. And the effort required to dispel this knee jerk notion was not much in magnitude. Consider this probably the best piece of evidence as to who is legit and who is not inside this subject. You will notice that this pattern has repeated over and over again across the last 5 decades of North Korea style treatment of the subject.

Skeptics habitually place a D level of effort into their work.

Of the 11,999 craft with identity, I knew what they were immediately, by their 1. altitude, 2. lane of traverse, 3. speed, 4. radar cross section, 5. radar spectrum and seeker pattern and 6. IFF squawk. Nor do you engage these matters at a mere 15 miles distance. My average engagement envelope was 80 miles (240 miles or more if I were working with AAWACS aircraft). And we could see craft flying low and under the clouds. Once a craft is at 15 miles distant you have had ample time to analyze it through multiple systems and also view it visually in many instances. Heck you can see from ship to ship at 12 miles. Only laymen will be impressed by these big sounding distances. I can see it now – the weapons systems designers and DARPA and SPAWAR and NAVSEA: “Let’s only give them one system to evaluate air threats – that’ll make it a lot more fun and produce a lot more UFO reports. And can you imagine the airline passengers’ surprise when military jets come in close to find out who they are or maybe even shoot them down because of ‘optical illusions’? Who said flying wasn’t serendipitous?”

Brian has conveniently spun the pilots involved, and all pilots for that matter, as credulous dolts, ignorant of ATC IFF protocol, vulnerable to simple every-single-day ‘optical illusions’, dependent upon one system (needing instruction on its operation and interpretation from Brian and his cohorts), unaware of the traffic around them, and knee-jerk interpreting anything which surprises them on one system return – to be interstellar aliens. This is not only simpleton logic, it is insulting and dimwitted.

This is a form of ad hominem fallacy called wishful accusation. Brian has directly accused the pilots involved of professional incompetence. But again, since he is a sskeptic – he will NEVER be held to account for this.

These fakers do not understand ethics (professional practices). These pilots would not have been chasing this craft if it were a civilian craft a mere 15 miles away (very close proximity in air coordination), nor by means of solely FLiR – and Brian Dunning’s ‘multiple pilots familiar with the characteristics of FLiR’ he sought, know this. Quod erat demonstrandum, someone in Brian’s chain of accountability is lying. If these ‘multiple pilots’ let an unidentified aircraft get within 15 miles, squawking no IFF, and in a fleet formation and only looked at them on FLiR – and they consider this normal? – then these are piss-poor pilots. Those analyzing these scenarios are guilty of cherry picking single aspects of the encounter to debunk – elemental pleading. Brian conveniently did not want to go any further, like seeking the Incident Report, OPREP or speaking with the AW scene commander or the pilots themselves, because additional information did not service the wall of denial he was seeking to patch together by means of spit and a couple bricks.

So much for ‘the evidence’.

https://theethicalskeptic.com/2018/05/01...-hack-job/