Why people tend to believe UFOs are extraterrestrial

But what do I know… I was just a gullible grunt who believed anything Air Wing told us.

@Desert Tortoise

Wearing ridiculous disguises was never an official policy, but many test pilots with a sense of humor copied original P-59 test pilot Jack Woolams habit of wearing a Gorrilla suit.

There was a documentary on it, although I will admit it was probably embellished quite a bit.

Any "UFOs" are scams or enemy technologies.

Or imho the most likely explanation is that these UFOs or UAPs are advanced and highly classified US technology. There are some interesting US patents, some from a US Navy scientist, on craft with wild anti gravity mechanisms that look an awful lot like the black triangles often reported on the internet. There are also some interesting discussions of the physics of how these craft could indeed be possible with the main caveat being the ridiculous amount of energy required, but nuclear power could be the solution. It would not surprise me if the "Tic-tac", black triangles often called the TR-3B and some other UAPs are indeed advanced US aircraft/spacecraft.

In the 50’s test pilots of the 1st generation fighter jets and helicopters wore gorilla suits, Bigfoot masks, clown makeup and other ridiculous disguises so any eyewitness reports would be dismissed as crazy talk

As someone who has been in the T&E community and served in a real life test and evaluation squadron I can say with assurance your story is pure bunk.

The science fiction writing of authors like Gene Roddenberry and A. E. van Vogt outlined rules for interaction between advanced, space faring societies, and more primitive societies, which basically stated that interacting with primitive societies was a bad idea. Such rules, plus the use of stealth technology, could help explain why there is not more interaction with visitors from other places, if one thinks of current Terran society as being in the primitive stage of development.

In practice it doesn’t matter, as we simply cannot meet them if there were any. Either we are the only civilization, then we are the rare and unique exception, the very statistical outlier and won’t or can’t meet anyone else. Or, which has a higher probability, there have been , still are and will be an unlimited number of civilizations, but completely separated by location and on the timeline. It’s , somehow illustrated for better understanding, like those prime numbers in comparison to all numbers. For example a few before then 79, 83, 89, 97 and so on afterwards. Rare, without much of a systematic rule, but in fact also endlessly as if you would count 1,2,3,4, etc and no two of them are neither on the same position on the number line nor could you read or speak them out at the exact same time.

There has to be intelligent life out their some where.

We are not alone.

But why would they possibly want to visit earth for a holiday?

The odd fly past, ok , a peek at best.

But a full on take me to your leader moment?

Possibly light years away, surely there are many better closer holiday destinations.

When DMT is taken, people report realer-than-real encounters with intelligent aliens. There is endogenous DMT in the brain too. It may account for some reports.

I googled DMT. I don't see what it has to do with this discussion.

On the subject of psychedelics, recent writing on the subject would seem to indicate that there are those who can be helped by them. Seems to me that it is not the "trip" that is the important thing, but rather the re-wiring of the brain that might be happening while under the influence, and thus the state of the brain after the chemicals have been removed from the body. Some people with neuroses and psychoses, might, and I stress might, benefit from psychedelics, in that they may give up the way of thinking that is causing them problems. It is possible that psychedelics can help one to give up needlessly complicated, and counterproductive, ways of thinking, if one is so inclined.

@1glenn

I am not being facetious but have you ever investigated the world presented to those on DMT? There is quite a lot of research about it. Rick Strassman is/was one researcher. I think he got disturbed by the consistencies of emanations that seemed to be indicative of a real dimension of electric beings and may have given up.

It's interesting that before space flight,most unexplained sights were of fairies or cryptozoology.

What's the next trend,I wonder?

You think that we were that lucky? 

Confirmation bias would make sure that anybody that can answer the question is by definition that lucky. The whole point is that as long as you don't know what is the requirements then there is no meaning on the calculations based on the number of planets for example. It is inconsequential to know how many chances you have until you know what are the odds for something to happen. What if the actual possibility is one on a trillion? or one in a quintillion?

They're already finding signs of (non-intelligent) life on other celestial bodies in our own solar system.

Organic molecules for example are not sings of life, they are signs of processes that could (in time ans with other factors) develop into life, but once again that depends on variables that we have not yet fully identified yet. The other thing is that life do not automatically develops into intelligence, and intelligence do not automatically means civilization. Just looking at our planet is enough to see how most of the living organisms do not need a high degree of intelligence to be adapted to the point to be currently alive, and only one ended up creating a civilization (again confirmation bias).

It must be hard to stay confident thinking these calculations are "meaningless"

Still not, because if you have one in a million chances for some absolute requirement for civilizations to exist, and you identify 15 of those rare requirements then the number of planets ends up being wholly insufficient to originate even one civilization. Specially because the point would be for those other supposed civilizations to exist in a time and location that would make any kind of contact feasible.

Breaking this thread into sections.

At the time, when my family saw the UFO, we thought we were looking at Saturn. Later, I learned one can never see the rings of Saturn with the naked eye. Plus, these rings were edge on, which cannot be seen even with telescopes from Earth. Additionally, the object was almost directly overhead, where Saturn never appears, at least not from the northern hemisphere.

Over 50 years ago, while in the USAF, a had a job supporting the launching of satellites and the test launching of ICBMs from Vandenberg AFB, here in California. I would like to make clear that I never saw anything related to this topic while on official duty with the Air Force. However, one time, while off duty, and while in Los Angeles, I saw what I can only describe as an ET. It was very strange to me that no one else could see it, as there were thousands of people about, but I refuse to deny what I saw. It was about 3 meters tall, maybe more. It appeared to be wearing what I can best describe as a space suit. Unlike human space suits, it was made up of flat surfaces and sharp angles. It was greenish tinted yellow, and transparent. In other words, while I could see it, I could also see right through it. It was walking away from me. I stared at it. It stopped, and then without turning its body, swiveled its head to look directly at me. I am sorry to say I got scared, and got out of there as fast as I could. Of course I wonder what would have happened if I had interacted with it. I speculate that it was wearing stealth technology, but for some reason I was able to see it. I would also speculate that it was non organic, in other words, robotic, or mechanical.

For nearly 50 years, I never told a single solitary soul what I had seen. Only when I retired, and felt like I had nothing to lose, did I start telling people about the experience, starting a few years ago.

Recently, a few weeks ago, a family of three people called the Las Vegas police and reported seeing what they assumed to be aliens in their back yard, shortly after a meteorite was seen flashing over the city. It was reported in the news that they said they saw greenish creatures between 8 and 10 feet tall. The police who investigated did not see anything, but found their testimony credible. What I find especially interesting is the similarity to what I saw so many years ago. I have mentioned to family and friends that what was reported in Las Vegas was similar to what I told them about years ago.

I have seen both, a UFO, and an ET.

As a boy, our whole family saw something in the sky above Los Angeles that looked like a flying saucer, seen edge on. This was before the existence of human satellites. We stared at it for about 10 minutes. It was stationary, as far as we could tell. We stopped watching, and went back in the house. The night before, and the nights after, it was not there.

The very first college course I took was astronomy. The last day, the prof opened the class up to questions. I asked if he had ever seen a UFO. He said yes, and went on to tell us how he and another astronomer had seen a large UFO over Los Angeles. They didn't have any fancy equipment, other than their telescopes, so they determined its altitude with triangulation. It was over 50 miles above the city, day after day. They took pictures, and gave them to Project Blue Book, a program then run by the USAF. The Air Force took their pictures, said thank you, and that was the end of the subject. For them to go public by going to the press would have opened them up to ridicule, and put their jobs at risk.

If life evolved here, there is no reason why it couldn't have evolved elsewhere. Whether that life has reached Earth is another question altogether.

I have seen several UFOs. I do not identify them as alien spacecraft, because if I knew they were alien spacecraft they would be identified, not unidentified.

To say one does not believe in UFOs is strange. There are many UFO encounters out there. To say one believes that all or some UFOs are alien spacecraft is where the question lies.

One shouldn't ask, "Do you believe in UFOs?" One should ask, "Do you believe some UFOs are from outer space?"

When it comes to inter-terrestrial life, we wouldn't just have to manage to be in the same place as them for us to meet, which due to the vastness of space makes that particularly unlikely, but also exist at the same time, which essentially increases the factor of unlikeliness exponentially.

There may very well have been, or will be, or are lots of aliens out there, but actually making it happen where we meet up is very hard and unlikely.

@virusrex They aren't meaningless. Most astrophysicists will tell you in a very simple way.

100 to 400 billion stars in our milky way galaxy. Each star has an average of 1.6 planets.

You think that we were that lucky? They're already finding signs of (non-intelligent) life on other celestial bodies in our own solar system.

Now they say there could be upwards of 2 trillion galaxies in the universe. Each contains billions or trillions of stars, and even more planets.

It must be hard to stay confident thinking these calculations are "meaningless"

As astronomer Carl Sagan wrote, “The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”

Well, that is no argument for there being conscious life anywhere else. Perhaps we are the only ones - and it is touch and go whether we are really conscious - and it is our role to not only survive here - which is also looking touch and go - but spread life itself against all odds, and the nihilists among us, to the rest of the universe.

In the 50’s test pilots of the 1st generation fighter jets and helicopters wore gorilla suits, Bigfoot masks, clown makeup and other ridiculous disguises so any eyewitness reports would be dismissed as crazy talk. They would also trick out the exterior with enough colorful lights to make a Carnival float embarrassed just to up the crazy factor.

The chance of intelligent life somewhere other than Earth is theorized to be 99.99% I believe that.

As long as the full set of factors necessary for life to develop intelligence to a degree of originating a civilization are not known these types of calculations are meaningless. Is like looking at a lottery ticket with a number with 6 figures and thinking this means there is one in a million chances it will win the first prize only for the lot, group, color, shape etc. of the ticket to also be of importance.

UFO’s and aliens are like God. No proof of existence but people want to believe. I’d put my money on extraterrestrial existence over God any day but I’m not a betting man. The truth is out there!

The chance of intelligent life somewhere other than Earth is theorized to be 99.99% I believe that.

I actually believe that there are plenty of places across the seemingly infinite amount of galaxies harboring intelligent life.

I do not believe any one of them has come to Earth. Why would they? We were barbaric savages until not too long ago. Even if we reached some technological level they would recognize, we're still on a path to self destruction. If they were to visit, and had light-speed tech, it would still likely take hundreds if not thousands, or millions of years to reach us too. How many generations would need to live and die in space cans to reach us?

Any "UFOs" are scams or enemy technologies.