[extropy-chat] The NSA's disclosures on UFOs

[Martin Striz]

On 4/25/06, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> That many reliable military personnel have had
> encounters with UFOs, with collaborating radar
> evidence seems to raise the Bayesian posterior
> probability of their existense quite high in my
> estimation.

Really?  Higher than all the other possible earthbound explanations,
especially in light of what we know about the accuracy of eyewitness
testimony?  When the Titanic went down, half of the survivors claimed
it went down in one piece while the other half claimed it broke in
half, yet they were all there, in the middle of the ocean, a few
hundred yards away, with only the Titanic to look at, and she was a
big boat.  How much can you infer about some blinkety lights a few
miles away?

The posterior probability that we are being visited by aliens is still
low if the prior probability (estimated by the Drake Equation) is low.
 And it is.

> One of the more interesting tidbits of information I
> found was the Gersten piece that states that "during
> October, November, and December of 1975, reliable
> military personnel repeatedly sighted unconventional
> aerial objects in the vicinity of nuclear-weapons
> storage areas, aircraft alert areas, and
> nuclear-missile control facilities at [lists several
> Air Force bases...] Many of the sightings were
> confirmed by radar."

Do you think it is merely coincidence that so many UFOs occur near
military bases?  Do you think this is because aliens happen to have a
peculiar interest in ancient (from their perspective) weapons systems,
or is a more parimonious explanation in order?

Martin