284K views · Apr 27, 2020 · 2:54 · 5 HN recommenders · 8 mentions · discussed 2020–2026
Mick West explains the three Navy UFO videos (FLIR, GIMBAL and GOFAST) released in 2020, giving mundane explanations such as a distant plane and camera artifacts. He notes the videos were not new and had been circulating since 2017.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN recommends it as a calm, evidence-based debunking whenever the Navy UFO videos come up.
“Mick West has some great videos on it”HN comment, 2022
“Mick West has some great videos on it”
Explains UFO videos with geometry, imaging, and gimbals.
All of the hyped UFO videos released over the past few years are easily explainable given a basic understanding of geometry, imaging and gimbals. Mick West has some great videos on it: this video
“extremely well-researched videos analyzing UFO claims”
Thorough, evidence-based analysis of the Gimbal video.
For anyone else who has a UFO-crazy uncle, I've found Mick West's YouTube channel to be invaluable link . Mick is a retired video game programmer (Spider Man, Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk), who does extremely well-researched videos analyzing UFO claims. He's not flashy or trying to be entertaining, just thorough, evidence-based and scientifically rigorous. He'll even do controlled experiments, recreations and 3D models to validate what's going on. And he's unfailingly respectful no matter how unhinged the claim. His work explaining the "Gimbal Video" is a good example: this video
“I was also freaked out by these videos until I saw this”
Explains the Navy UFO videos with domain knowledge.
Apparently, no real gymnastics needed — just some domain knowledge. I was also freaked out by these videos until I saw this: this video
“Mick West's full playlist with explanations”
Mick West explains the UFO videos in a playlist.
Not weird at all: this video Mick West's full playlist with explanations: link An article mentioning Mick West: link link
“I'd recommend checking out Mick West's videos on them”
Mick West analyzes the three Pentagon videos.
> I found 3 pentagon confirmed videos today of Unidentified flying shapes going super fast. Whatever they are, this is pretty surreal If you're talking about the 3 videos I assume you are, I'd recommend checking out Mick West's videos on them: this video
“One thing that is not really explained is why experienced pilots would not be aware”
Explains the phenomenon, though commenter questions why pilots would not know.
I think you mean this one: this video One thing that is not really explained is why experienced pilots would not be aware of the phenomena explained in this video. Seems to me they would experience this all the time. fwiw I don't think it's actually an extraterrestrial object.
“already carefully debunked by Mick West”
Carefully debunked old material.
> these have low credibility Lower then low, to the point that whenever somebody mentions them, I believe there was just a "wish to be true" and then stop. When checked, it was just a "rerelase" of the old already published material (one can also think about to whose benefit that distraction was) which was already carefully debunked by Mick West: this video Mick West's full playlist with explanations: link An article mentioning Mick West: link Also, one day after NYT published their article "No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public" they published a correction too: "Correction: July 24, 2020 An earlier version of this article inaccurately rendered remarks attributed to Harry Reid , the retired Senate majority leader from Nevada. Mr. Reid said he believed that crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred and that retrieved materials should be studied; he did not say that crashes had occurred and that retrieved materials had been studied secretly for decades. An earlier version also misstated the frequency with which the director of national intelligence is supposed to report on unidentified aerial phenomena. It is 180 days after enactment of the intelligence authorization act, not every six months." Emphasis mine, now imagine how many articles in how many media were written before the above correction, and it will explain what most of the consumers got as the message (namely, the first, utterly fake version with fake "crashes").
“what do you make of this?”
Suggests the objects assumption may be wrong.
just because it hasn't been explained easily does not imply there's a problem with our beliefs about technology. for example, that they are objects at all is already an assumption that could be wrong. what do you make of this? this video
