psychic chess masters

The never ending never endingness seemed to go on forever.  But seriously, what did you think of those three UFO pics I posted from Russia, China and Poland at about post #599?  Did you see the vids and compare them?  Worth a look for sure.

Ok accidentally erased my original version as i am typing this up as i am thinking about it.

I have to say that we can not trust our eyes to tell the truth as the let us see facts and not he truth all the time. I had a class in image manipulation when i went to an Institute so if you can think it you can do it in a photo/pic.

I believe in order to determine the nature of the object we have to determine the nature of the pilot which can be done by behavior. It would easier to follow a line of thinking to prove if a human is piloting this aircraft than if an alien is piloting it.

Now the UFO in question does not have the glass in areas we would come to believe in air crafts which would determine the front and back. Neither does it show and signs of an external engine. Then add in no wings or horizontal to help it maneuver.

The idea that is showed that it did not have any weapons speaks volumes. To see if they were testing out maneourvers i would need a pilot as i can ask them if it was in ideal area to test out a flight plan even to avoid other air planes from near by airport. Nothing proven yet.

Now i may have something here. Well have to take away the idea they are Army, Navy pilots and just scientist. They would want to examine the earth?  Well if this UFO can traverse in space one of its primary goals on a mission would be to explore. So i figure it was exploring for possible structures to live underground.(Nuclear Bomb shelter) Plus looking for natural resources like water and oil and etc. Looking for dinosaur fossils?

It is pretty hard to approach this by a method in a couple of minutes and sum up a yes or no response as we know we have faulty data to determin the truth here.

Isn't that what the mystic monkey told Simba in the Lion King? Hahahahahaha.

Haha, so it is.

Not neccesarly, maybe incompetence is just the more generous assumption:

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." - Napoleon Bonaparte

The answer is : Bayesian expectation.

Your underlying reasoning is : if witnesses are admitted to testify, it is that we estimate that the probability p they saw something accurately is enough, say p >75%. Admitting that the same percentage holds for UFO sightings (again, that is questionable, it's not like they saw a flying saucer an a green humanoid coming outside of it), we should accept their testimony in this case too.

But this is not true when we have some information about the probability of the event they are testifying of. In a trial, there is usually a corpse and the suspect was near the area - madmen testifying that they saw their neighbour kill someone and then run away when nobody reported a dead are not taken seriously.

Well, it is not very clear, so take a look at this instead :

Nor should we ascribe certainty, meaning or cause when there is a lack of details.

I much prefer to deal in likelihoods than absolutes, or in cases like the prospect of alien visitation, extreme unlikelihoods.

I never said alien life was unlikely -- in fact I believe quite the opposite.

I think alien visitation is unlikely.

What motivation to visit here?  How to overcome the enormous time and energy requirements?  How do you know that there's something worth seeing in order to understake such a large investment as to travel to a specific tiny rock in an enormous universe?

Sounds like your grasp of physics may not be as strong as you'd have us believe.

Also: why send organisms with their incredibly taxing life support requirements en-route?

If the reports keep pointing to something which no government or military is capable of making, then it's logical to assume a motivation for being here which is not easily discovered. 

That's a long string of what-ifs of increasing unlikelihood.

You did not read my post, did you ?

Ok, so let's do the following thought experiment.

Consider the following two affirmations :

A = "the Megasweet yogurt makes you invisible." (seen on an advertisment)

B = "the point of latitude 50°N and longitude 70°E is in the ocean."

Obviously, you do not trust A. But it is possible that actually they did invent a yogurt that makes people invisible, who knows. So let's say A is true with probability 0.00001%.

B : if you don't know anything about geography, well, 75% of the Earth surface is water. For a random point, B has 75% of chances to be true. So let's say it's the same here.

Now, someone comes and tell you "A/B is true". You know this person to say the truth 99% of the time.

You are now almost sure of B.

Do you believe him for A ?

(and YES, the probability that aliens have come to visit us, before having any testimony, is very low)

1- that is assuming the universe is infinite, which is not absolutely sure. ( beware : without boundaries does not mean infinite)

2- the question, again, again, again, is not if they exist, but if they visit us.

The reports point to an increasing likelihood. It's not out of pure whim that an alien hypothesis is speculated. The reports continue to point towards it.

There are also strong theoretical reasons to believe it is not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_Universe#Spherical_universe

Topology for dummies ahead.

If you live in 2D on a plane, and decide to explore and see if it is finite or infinite, either you will reach the border of the world and then you are sure it is finite, or you will walk forever and gets as far as you want of your intial point.

But if you live, again in 2D, but on a sphere, you can walk forever without meeting a "border". Yet, the area of the world is finite.

You can discriminate between the two universes because they have different geometrical properties - for example, on the plane, the sum of the angles of a triangle is always 180° which is not true on a sphere - but this gets harder and harder as the sphere becomes bigger because then it becomes locally flatter.

Now, imagine this is the same but in 3D.

The wikipedia I quote does not make reference to the very recent measurements of the universe's curvature that tend to indicate that the universe is not a sphere as in the previous analogy.

Even a quick glance at the corresponding wikipedia page would hint you that this is a theoretical possibility in the sense of "an object that might not exist, have existed or ever will exist", not in the sense of "hard to do but possible".

And all of this is the most plausible explanation for some lights in the sky?