>Why close all those doors without sufficient evidence to close them?
Because there isn't sufficient evidence to open them in the first place. Might as well claim it is unicorns and dragons, you don't have any evidence it isn't.
How are you supposed to discover something new about the universe if all doors are closed from the start? How do you go from zero evidence where something isn't worth being investigated further because there isnt sufficient evidence to there being sufficient evidence for it to be considered acceptable to investigate? The seems like a feedback loop that will result in nothing new ever being discovered unless something magical drops all evidence in your lap.
We have an observation. What do we do with it? First we check to see if it fits with the current model. If it doesn't fit the current model we then purpose a hypothesis and purpose a test that would prove the hypothesis there by expanding the current model.
The process isn't hey look at that, must be aliens.
We have unexplained phenomena. We have eyewitness accounts from the Navy's top pilots as well as instrument data and IR footage. If we cannot explain this phenomena with what we know, then we must consider the possibility its something that we don't know. Simply putting your head in the sand or attempting to debunk this documented phenomena with patently absurd explanations like "a lens flare" or "it was only Venus" isn't good enough for thoughtful people.
A squadron commander doesn't get into that position by being incompetent. Fighter jets are incredibly complex and demanding and there are lots of different aircraft to pilot in the navy.
I don't understand the nitpicking over a minor detail in a comment. Why are you talking about top squadron commanders now? What does top even mean? Top 50%? Top 95%? The point is the main individual was highly trained, in a high position and with years of experience.
> Simply putting your head in the sand or attempting to debunk this documented phenomena with patently absurd explanations like "a lens flare" or "it was only Venus" isn't good enough for thoughtful people.
So yeah I'm nitpicking that the poster inserted an invented fact that these were the Navy's "top pilots" to support their position while being a dismissive jerk.
> an invented fact that these were the Navy's "top pilots"
I don't think it is an invented fact. Top is ambiguous and has to refer to >50 percentile at a minimum. A commander of a squadron of f18s in the navy that graduated the navy's top gun program is most definitely above the 50th percentile (I would argue he would be in a very elite group of pilots that is much better than just half of others).
I definitely don't support condescending comments, but you too were dismissive.
There are multiple plausible hypothesis to explain these things, just dismissing the whole conversation as not worth discussing or being impossible seems very unscientific.
I might be overly pedantic with this point but saying a shiny balloon fits the limited data we have, doesn't mean it was a shiny balloon.
The thing that bothers me the most about this sort of discussions is that it's all done on "paper"[1]. It would be helpful to actually release a balloon, or whatever object you think it was, and check if you can reproduce the glare and other sensor data.
If it's very easy to reproduce then we can be more confident in that explanation and probably nail down more detailed characteristics of that object. Once we have that we can look where this object could've come from. For example, if it points to a balloon, did a company/organization lose a balloon in that time frame? Once we have all this info we would have an explanation that's more robust than someone saying: "It might be possible this and potentially that"
This requires money, time and the hardware. So I guess it's unlikely that will ever happen.
[1] Not saying it's useless. Those calculations and/or simulations are very useful to limit the types of objects it could be.
Of course being consistent with an explanation doesn't mean it definitely is that thing. But being consistent with a mundane thing means it looks the way it would look if it was the mundane thing.
It's very normal to not be able to prove what caused an event. This morning I heard a sound, it sounded pretty much exactly like a car horn, but maybe it was something else. We'll probably never know.
It's an excellent point that any organization serious about determining the cause would be conducting experiments, I can go honk some car horns and see if I find one that sounds similar. It doesn't seem like that happens with "UAP research", or the US Navy
Because there isn't sufficient evidence to open them in the first place. Might as well claim it is unicorns and dragons, you don't have any evidence it isn't.