>>45258
There's actually an interesting point here regarding empiric process and seeing results of a phenomenon, and nature of real time calculations.

Say you have a very slow computer that is computing some kind of equation. Say it will finish its computation way after the point where you could see the result, in a million yeas or whatever. You do not know how it really works, only that it sometimes outputs certain results, and that in the end, it will come to a final conclusion.

You really want to know the result of the computation, but you can't make the computer go faster, or take it apart without breaking it. So you observe its behavior, study it, and make a "model" of the computer, based on rational extrapolations and reasoning. You build a much faster computer that, according to your model, is doing the same computation as the original computer, but much faster. It works for a few minutes and outputs the result.

Now can you actually say that you know what the slow computer will actually output a million years in the future? Empirically, no. You can only say what your model outputted, and how believable its answer is, depends solely on how well you can justify that your model is correctly simulating the real thing. It can even be believed that your model has 100% identical behavior to the original, and the outputs will match. You can still not say that you empirically know what the original computer will output.

Why does it matter? It matters when you establish the original computer as some kind of ultimate authority or arbiter of truth, or rest the premise of your argument on the infallibility of the original computer. Substitute it with "god", "evolution", "the divine process", "dialectics", "the free market", whatever. If the SOURCE of the authority that your argument hinges on is THE THING ITSELF, then even if you can substitute the "computation" with your model, you can not substitute the AUTHORITY of the original process with the authority of the model. So you can say "god is infallible" or "free market just works" or whatever, I could be willing to accept that, but when you start explaining to me how, or why, or how you think these things work, what they mean, and what we should do about it based on your reasonings, I only have YOUR authority and word to go on, not of the thing itself. And your word is only as good as you can justify that it is correct.

So what's my point? dunno, don't have one, just writing shit that comes to my mind.

There ia a recent NYT article about a government program which investigates unknown aerial phenomena, ostensibly to ensure they don't belong to foreign military. That seems simple enough, but the headlines are coming from a statement made by Eric Davis, an astrophysicist who assisted that program in identfying physical artifacts:

>No crash artifacts have been publicly produced for independent verification. Some retrieved objects, such as unusual metallic fragments, were later identified from laboratory studies as man-made.
>Eric W. Davis, an astrophysicist who worked as a subcontractor and then a consultant for the Pentagon U.F.O. program since 2007, said that, in some cases, examination of the materials had so far failed to determine their source and led him to conclude, “We couldn’t make it ourselves.”

No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/politics/pentagon-ufo-harry-reid-navy.html

Seems like a bombshell revelation, but Eric Davis has a long-held interest in UFO and paranormal research, which leads me to question whether his conclusions are biased, or the result of wishful thinking. An article from 2013:

Colleague Confirms NASA Affiliated Physicist Dr. Eric W. Davis’ UFO Research
http://undergroundresearchinitiative.blogspot.com/2013/05/colleague-confirms-nasa-affiliated.html

Davis mentions Skinwalker ranch, which is a paranormal hotspot. It's also the subject of a new History Channel show similar to Ancient Aliens. I've watched it, but wasn't impressed. I fall into the 'Want to Believe' category, but distrust any investigation-or information- which comes from the Pentagon. My suspicion is that they want to encourage UFO belief because it acts as a cover to conceal their own top secret capability. The 'Tic Tac' UFO video(filmed by a navy pilot) was intriguing, though. I don't know what to make of it, simply because I don't think we have that kind of propulsion yet. But see, that's the problem, maybe we do, but it's just Top Secret.

Oh, that government program mentioned in the NYT piece was begun by Harry Reid, and gave millions to one of his polical doners:

>Reid initiated the program, which ultimately spent more than $20 million, through an earmark after he was persuaded in part by aerospace titan and hotel chain founder Bob Bigelow
>Bigelow, whose company received some of the research contracts, was also a regular contributor to Reid’s reelection campaigns
>Bigelow has spoken openly in recent years about his views that extraterrestrial visitors frequently travel to Earth. He also purchased the Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, the subject of intense interest among believers in UFOs.

The Pentagon’s Secret Search for UFOs
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/16/pentagon-ufo-search-harry-reid-216111

Skinwalker ranch again. Hm. It's like a paranormal research industry has been built up around a few key sites. This one feels too much like a tourist trap to me.

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinwalker_Ranch

>>44845
There was a pretty ebin episode of Joe Rogan Experience recently that discussed this. It was a bit schizo but super entertaining.

>http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/george-knapp-jeremy-corbell

Also, the second pic in your post (from FLIR.mp4) is off of an ATFLIR pod. You can tell by the symbology and layout of the controls. It's a perfectly capable TGP, but it suffers the same limitations as anything using that technology. You see what it senses and nothing more. In this case, the screen says the following, it is tracking an IR signature. Most commonly spotting increased IR signatures caused by heat that pushes it above the background noise of solar IR radiation. So when in WHT (white hot, circled in red) mode what you are seeing is a large amount of IR-spectrum emissions. They don't form an identifiable shape but that is quite explainable with other information. Circled in green we have ownship altitude, in this case it's around Angels 20 in baro. In blue we have the pitch azimuth indicator, telling us that the point of interest is 6 degrees above point of origin, and in pink is the yaw azimuth, telling us the point is three degrees to starboard (right). So what we have is a large thermal signature being viewed from a point that's very close to directly behind it. That is prime positioning for seeing a lot of heat flare from jetwash.

Finally, accounting for the weirdness in the way the image behaves when swapping between TV and IR modes, that's a common thing in TGPs because the TV camera zooms further than the IR one does, so it's not the reading changing, but just the zoom level. Furthermore any movement that does happen will be amplified because the camera is in NAR mode (Narrow FOV) which means that from a camera setting of 1:1, it will close in on a bracketed section roughly the size of the yellow box and make that the full screen. The video also shows that this still is zoomed in on top of this FOV change so you're looking at a very distant target with tools not intended to show details, or in the case of TV mode, beyond its reasonable utility in that field. It makes sense that you'd get strange readings.

Tbh, out of the three, it's the least impressive and by far the easiest to make the plane argument for.