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What is one generally common thing a lot of people do or believe that you cannot understand? (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Ganondorf@kbin.social to c/AskKbin@kbin.social

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I bring this up because it seems to once again be gaining traction in the zeitgeist: I cannot comprehend why UFO hunters put so much time and effort into trying to force governments to "reveal the truth about extraterrestrial contact", but I also cannot fathom how they think aliens even have a chance of successfully contacting us in-person in the first place.

a) Why does anyone believe extraterrestrials would be able to track us down at all? Space is BIG.
b) If aliens knew we existed in the first place, please explain the math of how they'd get here. Even taking Star Trek logic into account and considering warp drive as a possibility, when considering relativity, Newton's third law and the mathematics of achieving the right conditions of either for deep space travel, warp drive still seems implausible.
c) In the mathematically improbable situation where intelligent life did manage to get here, why would they be tiptoeing around in the background for seemingly 80 or so years when they are clearly technologically superior to us and nothing humanity has available to itself could remotely stop them? It seems silly to imagine these incredible lifeforms getting here and then having an "oops we crash landed" event.
d) Lastly, governments successfully covering up such an event(s) for decades is a fairy tale. Governments playing around with flight and stealth technology for the last 100 years? Yeah that seems likely.

Do I think intelligent life exists? Absolutely. Is there a chance those beings have contacted or reached us? 99.9999999% no. Is it fun to speculate about the possibilities and portray those possibilities in stories? Of course. Should people be spending time and money forming organizations to "force the government to tell the truth", thereby wasting everyone else's time and resources and ultimately being drains on society? Absolutely not. I don't get it.

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[–] barnyard_noise@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I cannot understand the people who do those annoying social media “pranks” that involve making a mess for some poor retail person/janitor/cashier to clean up. Especially because the most direct explanation is that the videos gain traction—to which I then ask, who are the people that watch those videos and go “heck yeah I love this”??

[–] sailsperson@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People who dislike these videos and comment on them to say that the perpetrators are morons also contribute to the tractiosn it gains because algorithms love engagement, corporatations love engament, so they'll happily show the videos to more people in the vicious cycle of engagement.

[–] niktemadur@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

This is why I hate the constant bombardment of trump/musk/reddit/etc posts. Or toxic-flavors-of-the-month like Andrew Tate.

People feeding the noise, and I bet you most of them are convinced that "It's okay if I do it, because I'm being ironic, I'm above it all".
No they're not, they fixate on the most negative shit that floats across their field of perception. And there are always enough of these "I'm special, I get a pass" people to make the noise reach maximum level all the goddamned time.

[–] Eggyhead@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

A few years back there was a social media moron who came to Japan and pulled some stupid & offensive shit. I was actually living & working there at the time and, while I’m not a violent guy, I desperately wanted someone to go knock his teeth in. He had zero comprehension the shit he did for his pos channel meant more xenophobic discussions toward those of us who had/wanted nothing to do with him.

[–] a-man-from-earth@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Religion and the belief in an invisible god, for which there is no good evidence.

[–] Lunyan@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I'm not religious myself but I do understand it sometimes. I feel like it can be a way to make sense of a world that doesn't really make sense a lot of the time. It can be nice to have at least something to hold on to.
But people who use religion as an excuse to do bad? Hate them

[–] Narrrz@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

if you believe in God, I have a teapot you just CAN'T live without

[–] ivanafterall@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I don't believe in God, but I'd like to hear more about this teapot.

[–] curls@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't understand why people hit their children. I grew up seeing my siblings get beaten in front of me and then I tried to be as obedient as possible so I wouldn't get beaten as much. I feared my parents so much, I started having anxiety attacks from a younger age and not only acted neurotic about things that could possibly get me in trouble but would piss myself if I was sure I was going to get hit. I have told people this and they just say I was hit too much or I'm too sensitive, that's all, it's still fine to hit your kid. I've heard people defend being beaten with branches, shoes, belts, brooms, hangers, and cables. It made them "strong" and how else can a child understand right from wrong. I took a class on childhood development and the texts overwhelmingly say don't hit your kids at all. I cried reading those textbooks, someone finally agreed with me. I have a friend who is expecting, they are religious and said they will be hitting their kid because essentially God wants them to. It was very hard to hear those words.

[–] 1chemistdown@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Are you sure you have a friend expecting? Because, everything you wrote says you need to get away from people like that.

[–] AGuyAcrossTheInternet@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Child protection services will be happy to hear about this. And if you're in a country where they actually do anything, even better.

[–] density@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

hopefully the thing they do isn't house the children with sex predators, engage in eugenics, etc

[–] Ragnell@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, i don't get government conspiracy theorists. Yes, they investigated UFOs during the Cold War because it was the COLD WAR and they wanted to see if Russians were sending spyplane. Yes, the Pentagon believes in UFOs because it literally means Unidentified Flying Object, so yeah they believe they could be a weather balloon or something. No, they probably haven't actually met any aliens.

Every actual government conspiracy -- MK-ULTRA, COINTELPRO -- is something we know about because some guy leaks it because 3 can keep a secret if 2 of them are dead. It's always just one unit like the CIA and FBI because getting all levels of the Federal government on the same page is a damned nightmare. It's been 80 years since Roswell, it would be in freaking Wikipedia by now with sources.

[–] tal@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, they investigated UFOs during the Cold War because it was the COLD WAR and they wanted to see if Russians were sending spyplane.

Project Blue Book was Cold War, but military interest in unidentified flying objects and thus public interest was earlier, back to World War II.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter

Royal Air Force personnel had reported seeing lights following their aircraft from as early as March 1942,[11][12] with similar sightings involving RAF bomber crews over the Balkans starting in April 1944.[13] American sightings were first recorded by crews from the 422nd Night-Fighter Squadron stationed in Occupied Belgium during the first week of October 1944. At the time, these were erroneously believed to be Messerschmitt Me 163 rocket-powered interceptors, which did not operate at night.[14] However, the bulk of the sightings started occurring in the last week of November 1944, when pilots flying over Western Europe by night reported seeing fast-moving round glowing objects following their aircraft. The objects were variously described as fiery, and glowing red, white, or orange. Some pilots described them as resembling Christmas-tree lights and reported that they seemed to toy with the aircraft, making wild turns before simply vanishing. Pilots and aircrew reported that the objects flew together in formation with their aircraft and behaved as if they were under intelligent control, but never displayed hostile behavior. However, they could not be outmaneuvered or shot down. The phenomenon was so widespread that the lights earned a name – in the European Theater of Operations they were often called "Kraut fireballs", but for the most part called "foo fighters". The military took the sightings seriously, suspecting that the mysterious sightings might be secret German weapons, but further investigation revealed that German and Japanese pilots had reported similar sightings.[15]

On 13 December 1944, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in Paris issued a press release, which was printed in The New York Times the next day, officially describing the phenomenon as a "new German weapon".[16] Follow-up stories, using the term "Foo Fighters", appeared in the New York Herald Tribune and the British Daily Telegraph.[17]

In its 15 January 1945 edition, Time magazine carried a story titled "Foo-Fighter", in which it reported that the "balls of fire" had been following USAAF night fighters for over a month, and that the pilots had named it the "foo-fighter". According to Time, descriptions of the phenomena varied, but the pilots agreed that the mysterious lights followed their aircraft closely at high speed.[18]

The "balls of fire" phenomenon reported from the Pacific Theater of Operations differed somewhat from the foo fighters reported from Europe; the "ball of fire" resembled a large burning sphere that "just hung in the sky", though it was reported to sometimes follow aircraft. There was speculation that the phenomena could be related to the Japanese fire balloon campaign. As in Europe, no aircraft were reported as having been attacked by a "ball of fire".[19]

The postwar Robertson Panel cited foo fighter reports, noting that their behavior did not appear to be threatening, and mentioned possible explanations, for instance that they were electrostatic phenomena similar to St. Elmo's fire, electromagnetic phenomena, or simply reflections of light from ice crystals. The Panel's report suggested that "If the term 'flying saucers' had been popular in 1943–1945, these objects would have been so labeled."[2]

You then had the concern over the Japanese fire balloons:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb

And then, the year after the war ended, the flying saucer craze:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_flying_disc_craze

[–] Ragnell@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which is normal during a war, they don't know what sort of tech the enemy may have developed.

It wasn't even just flyingThere were rumors of a nasty ground-based sonic weapon on the ground in WWII.

[–] tal@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh, yeah, not disagreeing with the high-level point you're making, just talking about the timeframe.

[–] Ragnell@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I didn't think about pre-cold war. I knew there were sightings in WWI, but didn't realize there were official investigations,

[–] wagesj45@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

The Korean belief in fan death. Blows my mind.

[–] GizmoLion@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Diagramming sentences.

Shit makes no sense to me no matter how many times I look at it lol.

[–] Flaky_Fish69@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

orion's arm project

has a basic, but easily understood explanation. basically, if both relativity and causality hold, true FTL travel is impossible, no matter how it is you acheive it. (in the OA universe, wormholes are accepted because the ship itself is not actually going FTL, and therefore not breaking causality)

my understanding of why an alcuibierre drive wouldn't work is that space time itself has some energy(and therefore some mass,) all you're really doing in that system is replacing the reaction mass from being matter to being... uh... space. But my understanding is that of a highly unscientific mind trying to understand...uh... sciencey shit.

In any case, some things to point out? the fastest man-made object is currently the Parker Solar Probe which is planned to reach a top speed of about 190 km/s at it's fastest. (it's basically falling into the sun, using Venus to loop around and gain speed.) That's about .0006 c. At that speed, it would take about seven thousand years to reach proxima centauri (the nearest star at 4.2 light years.)

the energy necessary to accelerate even a few kilograms to a speed that could arrive at earth from another star (any other star), in a reasonable time frame is... appropriately described as astronomical. Any species technologically advanced to do so would be advanced enough to recognize that the only thing that's really unique about our system is... well, us, and all the other life that evolved to be here. So there goes economic incentive. Cultural curiosity? sure maybe. but they'd be technologically advanced enough to understand that we nuked the shit out of our selves, and that we're fucking psychotic. Which removes that.

Religious mandate? Oh. Great. Space-Mormons. (of course there's space-mormons,) This is dubious as then, said proselytizers would definitely defy the world government to preach. (kind of like that idiot that got dead trying to proselytize the Sentinelese people.) Religious mandate to wipe us out of existence? we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Curiosity? is tempered by the whole 'oh, they nuked themselves,' thing. Any technology used to get here could be reverse engineered and used to get there- and we're psychotic enough to nuke ourselves... there's absolutely no telling how we'd actually respond to aliens. probably not how Star Trek portrays our First Contact... (well. except in the mirror universe. That might be more accurate.)

c) In the mathematically improbable situation where intelligent life did manage to get here, why would they be tiptoeing around in the background for seemingly 80 or so years when they are clearly technologically superior to us and nothing humanity has available to itself could remotely stop them? It seems silly to imagine these incredible lifeforms getting here and then having an "oops we crash landed" event.

alien abduction stories replaced vampiric...er... visitation?... stories. it's just pop culture intruding onto people's imaginations.
But yeah. Any society capable of getting here has no need to tiptoe around- they can do what they want. The shinnanigans are... more likely us either misunderstanding things (ie military prototypes, whatever.) or straight up fraud (because, you know, that's happened.)

[–] HubertManne@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

well I mean if using star trek logic then relativity and newtons third law is not to much of an issue as the tech just breaks it or the bubble is outside of it or something and of course there is the prime directive. Lately for me its anyone who thinks bit coin is a good thing.

[–] Ganondorf@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Star Trek science breaks down very quickly when taking Third Law into account; Even the impulse drive wouldn't work as described by the franchise. Warp drive is the wibbly wobbly sciency part that breaks tech, though, absolutely agree.

[–] HubertManne@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I think this does not take into account the magical artificial gravity and structural integrity fields. All the technology is basically magic but if you accept the logic then it should be fine. You can't really start accepting the logic unless you accept it all.

[–] Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Star Trek science breaks down very quickly when taking Third Law

That's because it was written by scriptwriters not physicists.

This is not a put down. The science in Star Trek (and in every other sf universe) is there to serve the story and advance the plot, not the other way around.

Can't afford exterior shots of shuttles landing in the original series? No problem, simply create a transporter and make up the science to explain it.

[–] blivet@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, unless you want to watch the show spending every moment objecting to what is on screen, you have to accept the core premise that future scientists and engineers know so much about space-time that they can essentially manipulate it at will.