Watch William Shatner call the U.S. government's UFO hearings 'ridiculous' (video)

[Admin]

William Shatner speaks his mind about the government's recent UFO hearings on Capitol Hill in a recent interview, calling them "ridiculous."

Watch William Shatner call the U.S. government's UFO hearings 'ridiculous' (video) : Read more

 

[james.lathrop]

What the 'shat' is he talking about? "You mean, some highly intelligent being goes 10,000 light years with advanced technology, arrives here and hides?" Shatner told NewsNation anchor Elizabeth Vargas. "It doesn’t make any sense. If they're going to make that journey all the way here, it just beggars the imagination that they would hide and make it, like, 'Peekaboo, I'm here, no I'm not.'" -- umm -- buddy, did you forget about the Prime Directive from your own show ?

Are you seriously saying that there is no possible way that advanced interstellar aliens might be somewhat cautious and elusive when visiting or interacting with a pre-contact civilization (eg. us)?

I know its been a while since we've had a movie, but remember this?

the Prime Directive (also known as "Starfleet General Order 1", and the "non-interference directive") is a guiding principle of Starfleet that prohibits its members from interfering with the natural development of alien civilizations. Its stated aim is to protect unprepared civilizations from the danger of starship crews introducing advanced technology, knowledge, and values before they are ready."

 

[Sgtkeebler]

I kind of agree. Is there aliens or other life out there? I believe there is, the universe is such a huge a place and if life can grow here it can grow elsewhere.

What I also believe is that this was carefully crafted theatrics, created by a government that knows the majority of their followers are conspiracy driven. They used this to create an illusion of getting something done or to distract from something.

 

[nick.goloborodko]

Well, the more advanced our civilisation gets the more we understand the need to preserve natural ecosystems with minimal interference. Presumably , this would probably apply to other intelligent life in the universe also. Why do mostly military encounter them? Firstly, they have the advanced radars, jet fighters and the task to look out for any threats. Secondly, if an alien civilisation was trying to figure out the level of our technological progress - it would make sense for them to observe the military, since this is where most of the technological advances happen first. The transient nature of UAP encounters makes perfect sense to me, and assuming we have discovered a lesser developed civilisation somewhere and had a technological means to reach them - our approach would probably be extremely similar. They also probably don't have a whole lot to gain from initiating contact with us.

 

[Dave]

If you want to apply common sense to this question, then you ask what would we do in this same scenario. If humans are the advanced race we would not make contact. Observing a primitive race we would remember humanity when it was composed of primitive tribes (read countries)and have a warlike behavior to anything perceived as a threat. We are not 'one ' as a species. We have not yet evolved to that point, in our existence. The human race is a socially aggressive species composed of separate tribes.
The genie in the bottle is the truth and at a congressional hearing it was finally heard. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I do remember the "Prime Directive" on Shatner's Star Trek show.

But, I also note that these supposedly far advanced aliens have supposedly crashed multiple times on our planet, with multiple fatalities of their life form. Does that make sense for such an advanced species that is otherwise capable of hiding from us so well?

What really seems to be driving the conspiracy theories is that it is fun for those doing it. How can they lose? They make a claim that something is being covered up, which is impossible to completely disprove. So, they either get something revealed, which they would love, or they get to claim that it is still being hidden, and their game and celebrity goes on . . . and on . . . and on.

 

[Classical Motion]

The pertinent remark, in my opinion was that so far......the evidence presented is only desired evidence, not evidence that can be examined. The stretch is too far, for sober adults.

Bill knows this.

 

[Golgafrinchin_Ark_B]

I agree wholeheartedly with William Shatner and Unclear Engineer.

There are billions of stars in our galaxy alone with at least a billion planets or more. Why would some alien civilization chose to bankrupt their planet's economy (maybe their entire solar system's, too) to travel the endless void of space to a nondescript little planet in a nondescript solar system that lies in the far outskirts of an unspectacular galaxy? Because they like broadcasts of "Green Acres" and they want to pat the pig?

As Ms/Mr Engineer points out, in science, you cannot prove a negative, only a positive. So the gullible and/or conspiracy theorists can safely claim that aliens are here hiding on the dark side of the moon playing peek-a-boo all they want They just need to know that they are deluding themselves.

Of course there is other life in the vastness of space and nobody wants to encounter extraterrestrials more than I do, but I am not deluded.
Klaatu barrada nikto! [Whoooosh!]

 

[ChrisA]

What the 'shat' is he talking about? "You mean, some highly intelligent being goes 10,000 light years with advanced technology, arrives here and hides?"

He is saying that no one who is smart enough to travel 10,000 light years is stupid enough to do what people claim these UFOs are doing. The only explanation is that teenage aliens are stealing their dad's spaceships and visiting Earth.

I doubt these are teen aliens but how else to explain incompetent spaceship drivers?

I more reasonable explanation is that no one can travel 10,000 light years, no matter how smart they are.

 

[Classical Motion]

You picked a good handle.

 

[ChrisA]

If you want to apply common sense to this question, then you ask what would we do in this same scenario. If humans are the advanced race we would not make contact. Observing a primitive race we would remember humanity when it was composed of primitive tribes (read countries)and have a warlike behavior to anything perceived as a threat. We are not 'one ' as a species. We have not yet evolved to that point, in our existence. The human race is a socially aggressive species composed of separate tribes.
The genie in the bottle is the truth and at a congressional hearing it was finally heard. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle.

What would we do? First off we'd never send humans on a 10,000 year long trip. They would die of old age before getting even 1% of the way there. We would send some kind of very advanced AI-powered robotic mission. Aliens would do the same.

These robots would not crash-land their ships or even need to be close to Earth. The ship would be the size of a basketball and remain as far from Earth as the Moon is. It would read our entire Internet and learn out history, genetic sequence, and arts and literature in every language and it would still be 250,000 miles away and look exactly like a tiny space rock.

They have no need to land and mutilate cattle, kidnap people and make crop circles or even to fly around randomly over the ocean.

That is what we would do. Someday we might mass produce these tiny AI powered ships and launch hundreds of thousands of them over a period of centuries and wait for some results. In a few thousand years we might find something.

 

[Classical Motion]

This is why we must have spacetime. If there is no way to break distance and time restrictions, we're not going anywhere, and neither is anybody else.

Solving death, might be a better use of time. Many insist on the impossible for passion.

 

[Golgafrinchin_Ark_B]

Grounded: A reminder - - - Star Trek and all its iterations are FICTION. William Shatner and all the rest of us know that.

 

[sciencecompliance]

It's funny, I come to the same conclusion as Shatner from the exact OPPOSITE line of reasoning. If aliens are intelligent enough to come here across the vastness of space, they would probably want to conceal themselves from us and would be very capable of doing that. The highest value that Earth could provide to an advanced alien race is a look into an alternate timeline of sorts. To study us the best, they would probably want to reduce observer bias, especially once they realize that there is a species here that understands we are chemical amalgamations floating on a space rock in a vast universe with other space rocks and can record events we witness to historical record.

They would likely have little interest in interacting with us until it was impossible for them to conceal themselves from us anymore due to our technology approaching parity with theirs. They would also not need any of our resources since any natural resource found on Earth would be found and obtained much more easily closer to their home.

These UAP hearings are a dog and pony show with an ulterior motive. What that motive is, I don't know, but it's much more likely that people in the government are messing with us than we are seeing evidence of extraterrestrials visiting Earth.

 

[sciencecompliance]

... Why do mostly military encounter them? Firstly, they have the advanced radars, jet fighters and the task to look out for any threats. Secondly, if an alien civilisation was trying to figure out the level of our technological progress - it would make sense for them to observe the military, since this is where most of the technological advances happen first. The transient nature of UAP encounters makes perfect sense to me, and assuming we have discovered a lesser developed civilisation somewhere and had a technological means to reach them - our approach would probably be extremely similar. They also probably don't have a whole lot to gain from initiating contact with us.

Or the UAP encounters happen with the military for different reasons that don't imply aliens.

1) The military is testing some new technology on its own pilots. The military is publicly known to be working on holographic technology. This is well documented. It makes sense that they would unwittingly be testing this on their own pilots to get genuine reactions from military pilots and not risking incursion with other nations. Holograms don't need to behave in ways that adhere to the physics of physical objects, because they are not physical objects.

2) The UFO/UAP stuff is part of psy-ops to confuse our adversaries. It adds noise to the information stream that adversarial nations are trying to interpret to determine our capabilities. Or the military is trying to drum up public interest in space, so they can get more public support for more space-based military assets.

3) Advanced sensors the military uses produce anomalies or readings that look 'alien' because they deal with a different part of the EM spectrum than we are familiar with. IR videos of planes are an example of videos showing what people claimed to be UFOs/UAPs that have been debunked.

 

[sciencecompliance]

The ship would be the size of a basketball and remain as far from Earth as the Moon is. It would read our entire Internet and learn out history, genetic sequence, and arts and literature in every language and it would still be 250,000 miles away and look exactly like a tiny space rock.

I agree with the sentiment of you post, but I think an interstellar alien probe would be bigger than a basketball, especially if it was observing from this distance. They could use stealth technology to make the thing invisible to us and still have it be fairly large. There are just physical limitations to what something can do and how sensitive it can be when it's so small. With enough patience, too, I don't see any reason it couldn't get a lot closer and slip by undetected, even if it got down to, say, low earth orbit. A low-powered ion engine could eventually degrade its orbit and then raise it back up again without it being detected, or maybe it could cleverly use solar radiation pressure to do the same, though this might imply reflectivity that would make it more detectable.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I doubt that the UFO/UAP publicity is some sort of government psy-ops plan to confuse our adversaries or the public. It adds too much bad data to anything that somebody actually wants to study scientifically. I think it is the public that is generating most of the "alien" interpretations of unexplained observations, with a few pseudo-government-officials chiming in as self-proclaimed "whistle-blowers".

I would like to see these phenomena studied properly, and hear some scientific resolutions explained.

As a person who actually witnessed something that would have been described as "a silvery ellipsoid-shaped body with no visible details moving soundlessly a few hundred feet above the ground," and then having that vanish, with a commercial jet appearing behind it at high altitude, banking in the sunlight, I realize that the glint off that jet made the phenomenon that I saw. But, I still don't understand how that jet + sun + atmospheric conditions could have created the image that I saw. So, yes, I want some study and some explanation that makes sense to me. Don't try to tell me that I was tricked by an alien hologram to compensate for a momentary outage of their cloaking system so that I would not report them to the local UFO studiers.

 

[sciencecompliance]

I doubt that the UFO/UAP publicity is some sort of government psy-ops plan to confuse our adversaries or the public. It adds too much bad data to anything that somebody actually wants to study scientifically.

Do you think the military cares about putting bad data out there for the public? Assuming it's some psy-op to obfuscate true happenings, anyone who needs to know the truth is going to be "read in". The military / intelligence community has a well-documented history of doing things that are counter to the public interest in the name of national security. During the whole MK Ultra debacle, one man was even surreptitiously given a dose of LSD which led to him jumping out of a window to his death.

 

[Dave]

This is what recently happened for all who are interested. On July the 26th, of this year two reputable whistleblowers witnessed UAP's and reported them to a hearing held in congress. These witnesses saw intelligent lifeforms visiting earth. They saw two different spacecraft that could have been nothing other than highly advanced technology we do not understand.
They believe in their testimony and there is no reason for anyone to not, believe it. The reason is clear: similar testimony has been heard a thousand times over. Credible witnesses have seen highly advanced spacecraft often. It has got to the point where flight safety for the military, is constantly a concern. There is no 'celebrity status' This is very simple to understand. Intelligent lifeforms are observing us. They do not wish to contact us. They are not hostile. They do not wish to be discovered. These are the facts.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Dave, please provide a link to the actual testimony that you are describing - specifically the 2 witness accounts describing personally seeing "intelligent lifeforms visiting earth" and "two different spacecraft that could have been nothing other than highly advanced technology we do not understand." I am especially interested in the descriptions of the "lifeforms".

 

[Dave]

A person can rationalize anything they wish. or they can accept the facts. There is only one reasonable explanation to seeing a spacecraft that operates in such a way that defies the laws of physics. It was made by a species not of this world. Highly advanced and not human. When you observe the ISS as we all have for years we know exactly who made this spacecraft. The human race the intelligent lifeform of earth. It is okay to believe in the truth. Intelligent lifeforms are observing the earth.

 

[Classical Motion]

Are there any other aspects of existence that you are sure of........because of facts? What are some other "sure" things?

Is UFOs the only one?

 

[Classical Motion]

There have been thousands of eye witness testimony of angels, demons, future visions and talking to such and to the creator himself. For thousands of years. Even sacrificed to it. And have a rainbow and temple to prove it.

What say you?

 

[Dave]

If you believe in the big bang then the essence of life and intelligent life was found there. We live in a living universe. The majority of people believe intelligent lifeforms beyond earth exist. It is not important or necessary for you to be amongst the majority.
It is easy to believe that life and intelligent life exists in our galaxy. Look in the mirror. There's the proof. What you believe you see with your own two eyes is real. Ask Graves and Fravor.

 

[Classical Motion]

When I look in the mirror or when I look at any human body, the only thing I am sure of.....is man did not evolve on this planet. We do not fit and we have no protection from this environment, let alone predators. Or the most danger....other humans. We are an unique life-form of this location.

Our behavior is quite unique too. It does not fit either.

Some say this is pure speculation, I say it's obvious evidence.