Nothing needs a single explanation, so no. But this seems pretty uncharitable as-is; or maybe a kind of covert radical skepticism. Or maybe I’m just failing to think of a better set of multiple explanations – what is yours?
To clarify, by “UFOs” I was thinking of what, in this answer, is referred to as “Masses that move at ludicrous velocities and perform hard stops, turns, and accelerations.”.
Obviously, there’s a big space of possible objects that could be considered ‘UFOs’:
Flying objects that can’t (or just weren’t in some specific instance) be identified to some standard resolution, e.g. ‘That looks like a X aircraft but a little different.’
Objects or phenomena that aren’t flying but appear to be, e.g. due to a mirage.
My question is implicitly ignoring [2]. It’s also ignoring ‘mundane’ instances of [1], e.g. weather balloons, (early) experimental aircraft, stealth/spy aircraft. Those seem all accounted for by reasonable common-sense explanations, e.g. someone saw an aircraft they didn’t recognize or couldn’t clearly identify.
The specific subset of [1] that didn’t (at the time) seem explainable as aircraft, because they (seemed to) move in ways that aircraft can’t/couldn’t, seems much more likely to me to be people observing drones, e.g. un-piloted aircraft. And, given that UFOs (by definition) can’t be clearly identified, it seems likely that observations about them might be inaccurate, e.g. because their distance, velocity, or movements might not be accurately observable (especially given the salient comparisons available to observers). So what seems like objects that exhibit “ludicrous velocities and perform hard stops, turns, and accelerations” might well just be un-piloted aircraft that can exhibit a smaller degree of those same characteristics (because they’re not constrained by needing to not kill or injure pilots or passengers).
Obviously this couldn’t explain things like, e.g. Bob Lazars claims.
Hm, so roughly speaking, how would you break down the probabilities of some different explanations, given a generic UFO sighting? E.g. just a shadow or reflection, natural object in the sky, man-made stationary object, human-piloted airplane, drone, actually aliens? Is there some common sub-type of UFO sighting that you think has low probability of all non-drone explanations, even accounting for all the faults of human memory and character?
I don’t know enough about ‘generic UFO sightings’ to answer.
“actually aliens” seems very very unlikely – definitely not literally impossible tho.
My priors are that a lot of historical UFO sightings really were experimental aircraft. I’d expect some number were early drones too. Others seem to have definitely been, e.g. weather balloons.
Other sightings, particularly the relatively well-documented recent ones, seem very similar to ‘ball lightning’, which is also so little understood that it’s not even clear that it’s real. Assuming those observations are both accurate (e.g. the relevant ‘equipment’ was working correctly) and being interpreted accurately, they don’t seem to be drones, unless the drones themselves include novel propulsion systems (which is very plausible assuming the existence of such novel systems).
(And, as a a kind of reference point, ‘rogue waves’ seem to have been similarly so hard to study, until very recently, that their existence wasn’t entirely clear.)
Do UFOs need a single explanation? Just because we have one label on our map doesn’t mean the underlying territory is unified.
Nothing needs a single explanation, so no. But this seems pretty uncharitable as-is; or maybe a kind of covert radical skepticism. Or maybe I’m just failing to think of a better set of multiple explanations – what is yours?
To clarify, by “UFOs” I was thinking of what, in this answer, is referred to as “Masses that move at ludicrous velocities and perform hard stops, turns, and accelerations.”.
Obviously, there’s a big space of possible objects that could be considered ‘UFOs’:
Flying objects that can’t (or just weren’t in some specific instance) be identified to some standard resolution, e.g. ‘That looks like a X aircraft but a little different.’
Objects or phenomena that aren’t flying but appear to be, e.g. due to a mirage.
My question is implicitly ignoring [2]. It’s also ignoring ‘mundane’ instances of [1], e.g. weather balloons, (early) experimental aircraft, stealth/spy aircraft. Those seem all accounted for by reasonable common-sense explanations, e.g. someone saw an aircraft they didn’t recognize or couldn’t clearly identify.
The specific subset of [1] that didn’t (at the time) seem explainable as aircraft, because they (seemed to) move in ways that aircraft can’t/couldn’t, seems much more likely to me to be people observing drones, e.g. un-piloted aircraft. And, given that UFOs (by definition) can’t be clearly identified, it seems likely that observations about them might be inaccurate, e.g. because their distance, velocity, or movements might not be accurately observable (especially given the salient comparisons available to observers). So what seems like objects that exhibit “ludicrous velocities and perform hard stops, turns, and accelerations” might well just be un-piloted aircraft that can exhibit a smaller degree of those same characteristics (because they’re not constrained by needing to not kill or injure pilots or passengers).
Obviously this couldn’t explain things like, e.g. Bob Lazars claims.
Hm, so roughly speaking, how would you break down the probabilities of some different explanations, given a generic UFO sighting? E.g. just a shadow or reflection, natural object in the sky, man-made stationary object, human-piloted airplane, drone, actually aliens? Is there some common sub-type of UFO sighting that you think has low probability of all non-drone explanations, even accounting for all the faults of human memory and character?
I don’t know enough about ‘generic UFO sightings’ to answer.
“actually aliens” seems very very unlikely – definitely not literally impossible tho.
My priors are that a lot of historical UFO sightings really were experimental aircraft. I’d expect some number were early drones too. Others seem to have definitely been, e.g. weather balloons.
Other sightings, particularly the relatively well-documented recent ones, seem very similar to ‘ball lightning’, which is also so little understood that it’s not even clear that it’s real. Assuming those observations are both accurate (e.g. the relevant ‘equipment’ was working correctly) and being interpreted accurately, they don’t seem to be drones, unless the drones themselves include novel propulsion systems (which is very plausible assuming the existence of such novel systems).
(And, as a a kind of reference point, ‘rogue waves’ seem to have been similarly so hard to study, until very recently, that their existence wasn’t entirely clear.)
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