Thread by @Pinboard

This is a good thread about trying to think through the implications of the Pentagon UFO disclosures. There's several things about this mystery that make it difficult to reason about.

https://twitter.com/cabot_phillips/status/1394654014596337667

One is that over the last few centuries, we have gotten a lot of mileage out of always favoring mundane explanations over supernatural (or in this case extraterrestrial) ones. But we also learned it is wrong to dismiss evidence that contradicts your beliefs.

To me, the big question in the forthcoming UFO report will be exactly what the observations have shown. If small objects are accelerating at 20G with no visible means of propulsion, you could imagine that there's a military lab in China or Botswana where people are high-fiving.

If we have a pattern sightings dating back to the 1960's where large objects are accelerating at 700G, then we are not dealing with any country's military program, and the answers have to get weirder.

Here's an actual-speed video of our "make things go fast" capability from the 1970s. The Sprint missile accelerates at 100g, I believe it is the fastest accelerating rocket ever developed. It would turn a pilot to gravy.

Unfortunately, at these levels of weirdness answers like "the military is lying" become equally probable. If this is a real phenomenon, we need transnational disclosure of what everybody has seen.

To me, the reports of UFOs hovering over a roiling sea are particularly suggestive. The ocean is a great place to hide and it wouldn't hurt to poke around down there more, particularly when the worst case outcome is that we learn an immense amount about our planet

The most interesting and possibly significant thing about the reporting around UFOs is that credible sightings were rare and not very well documented before everyone started carrying a digital recording device... and they remain rare and unsatisfyingly documented now.

If the phenomenon is real, if multiple militaries share gorgeous footage of this stuff, then it's also important not to get too stodgy in our hypothesizing. Maybe it's the sysadmins to our simulation. Maybe it's evolution stumbling across one hell of a propulsion system.

But whoever, or whatever they are, these entities are going to need bookmarking.

What's outlandish and what's not in this scenario is also an interesting question. The Universe is old and the chance that autonomous probes are whizzing around and checking out planets. This might just be some extinct civilization's e-waste, its batteries slowly running down

But if the military does have strong, real evidence of beyond-human technology, what we should really do is buckle down and build a rocket to go catch Oumuamua. If weird things are here, they're likely ubiquitous.

What puzzles me most is how people assume UFOs would have to imply the presence of sentient beings, rather than just probes, even as we cover Mars with our own pretty crafty robots. Earth is a schlep and no one wants to be stationed here.