this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2026
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Dealer's choice? The only "data" we've got on either is people making claims, eyewitness testimony without substantiating physical evidence is worthless, and what little physical evidence anyone has ever produced for either phenomenon has been at best inconclusive, more often just proven to be fake
It's a big question, maybe start a thread and tag me?
Section 2.3 of 'The Scientific Investigation of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) using multimodal ground-based observatories' lays out some of the evidence. There's the model of categorising reports as [low credibility, low strangeness], [low credibility, high strangeness], [high credibility, low strangeness], and [high credibility, high strangeness], and obviously the high credibility high strangeness reports are the most interesting ones.
In all cases? e.g. in a legal trial? Or in ethlogy? Or only if the claims are anomalous? Like if I said I saw a flock of geese in the sky, and I had no video, you'd think I was lying?
We have a shitload of substantiating physical evidence for the existence of geese, try again
Right, that's my point, thanks for agreeing.
You're claiming that we do have data, but not enough. So let's investigate. And you're happy to trust my eyewitness account in one case but not the other.
It's obvious that some phenomena will have a lot of data, some (dark matter, Planet X, sterile neutrinos, Sasquatch), are only suspected to exist. We have varying amounts of data for varying phenomena, naturally.
Have you read Kuhn? He says that when anomalous data build up that contradicts the incumbent theory, they're dismissed/resisted for a long time, don't get research-funding, until enough substantiating data build up that the paradigm has to be replaced.
There are two ways of dealing with data that don't match your theory –
One of these two ways is rational, the other is dogmatic.
At least three claims have been made in this thread that were quickly debunked –
Which is more likely:
I'll admit to having poor understanding of the paradigmatic theory of these data. Supposing there is a vast conspiracy to fake UFO videos, to have fake congressional and military inquiries.... why? Why do these alleged conspirators make these claims? They get a lot of negative backlash from the dogmatists – why expose themselves to scorn for no reason?
Or the 'mass hallucination' theory.... what is the psychology theory behind that? I've never heard of a credible psychiatric report of people hallucinating the same thing at the same time. And why would people with no existing mental conditions suddenly start hallucinating?
Credit where it's due, I told you to try again and you did. Yes actually the idea that a bunch of people who have heard stories about a thing convince themselves that they've seen the thing is entirely plausible and in fact entirely scientifically verified, claiming otherwise doesn't help your credibility.
What is your preferred explanation of the anomalous data? Try even once.
Misidentification+delusion, fucking duh, have some dignity
Ok, we are in agreement: the sneer club is more interested in respectability/dignity than investigation. That's my main point.
Which kind and ætiology of Delusion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion
Lol cope