I'm quite confident that most people here are going to find a calm, measured, and thorough explanation of the observed phenomenon more credible than a snarky and instinctive dismissal that doesn't even bother to address a single one of the clearly demonstrated points in the analysis.

It's not the pilots job to theorize on whether the object is glare or not, just to describe what he's seeing. This is one plausible explanation, not THE explanation. There is still a UFO there, the video is just saying it probably doesn't look like what we see on screen.

If you're unwilling to even entertain that this might be a possibility because you want to believe... I guess do what you want.

Yes. This happened multiple times. There was an incident where the tree-blade bokeh of a NVD was mistaken for a UFO once, for example.

>Not to say he isn't right in this case, but I'm equality unenthusiastic about "skeptics" like that as I am about conspiracy theorists.

My working theory for what creates the lowest common denominator of internet comments, is that you have to believe whatever is necessary to believe to keep the conversation going.

If a skeptic debunks something by appeals to mundane facts relating to camera angles and physics principles, that closes the conversation. And for internet comment sections that is a problem. But, if them being right means they are arrogant, then we can talk about how arrogant they are, the nothing gets turned back into a something and the conversation can keep going.

The problem with both conspiracy theorists and non-expert "skeptics" is they both approach a phenomenon with their results already decided. It's just the conspiracy theorist has decided it's must be a conspiracy, and the "skeptic" has decided it must be some mundane thing with camera angles, and they both produce explanations to confirm their biases. They (especially the "skeptic") are just performing their identities.

And note the quotes around "skeptic," I'm not talking about people with real expertise in some area who show some crazy theory to be implausible or impossible.

> Conspiracy theorists can at least be entertaining sometimes, while "skeptics" tend to just bore you with self-assured arrogance while they take pot shots at low-hanging fruit.

I don't know about skeptics in general, but I found Mr. West's video to be pretty entertaining. He built some pretty impressive-looking simulations to support his claims.

I think conspiracy theories can be interesting and entertaining, but a lot of their theorists are kinda pathetic.

> Conspiracy theorists can at least be entertaining sometimes

Right up until they're sure that there's a child molestation ring in the basement of a pizza parlor that doesn't have a basement, and someone goes and shoots up the place because the conspiracy theory was so damn entertaining.

That's exactly why I said "sometimes." It might have been more precise to mean occasionally, but the clear intended meaning was that it was a minority of the time.

> Not to say he isn't right in this case, but I'm equality unenthusiastic about "skeptics" like that as I am about conspiracy theorists.

Yeah, it can be interesting to hear a dubunking from someone with an actual background in the field, but someone who's whole schtick is debunking is just as motivated to prove things wrong as the conspiracy theorists are to prove things right.

>> "Conspiracy theorists can at least be entertaining sometimes"

Very true. We got some of the best TV in history in the form of the Stargate franchise from goofy '90s conspiracies.