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Fine, I'll Talk About the Drones…

2024-12-20 · explainer · Hank · 17:19 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature (also: US politics & society, Philosophy & meaning) · mode: News analysis · tags: timely hook, self promotion

Hank argues that the December 2024 drone sightings are most likely ordinary drones, planes, stars and lens effects misjudged by primed observers, amplified by news coverage and political incentives, and that 'I don't know' should not be filled with aliens or secrets, since living with not knowing is how we learn.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Opening recap of drone reports: radar invisibility, Iranian mothership claim, lasers, orbs, Larry Hogan's video, internet theories

  • ★★ Hank recounts that over the last month there have been thousands of sightings of drone-like objects. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Hank reports that Congressman Jeff Van Drew claimed Iran has a mothership off the New Jersey coast that could be the drones' source. — 00:00:29

00:01:27 — Why drones evade radar, how brains judge size and distance in the sky, reports versus evidence of car-sized drones, priming

  • ★★ Hank reports internet theories that the drones are aliens, a deep state plot against Donald Trump, or a distraction from healthcare frustration and the murder of Brian Thompson. — 00:01:27 · Donald Trump
  • ★★★ Hank says he does not know what the first sightings were, but is much less confident than most people that they were at all weird. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Hank says drones usually cannot be spotted by radar because they fly too low and are too small to tell from birds, so radar invisibility is not mysterious. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Hank says depth perception from two eyes only works to about 18 feet; beyond that the two images are basically the same. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Hank says sizing objects in the sky is hard: an unfamiliar thing more than about 20 feet away with nothing to compare it to is hard to judge, and distant buildings can make it seem large, as with the moon illusion. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ Analysing a video of a plane apparently flying between two drones, Hank says there is no way to know their distances, and to his eye the plane is much farther away. — 00:03:53

  • ★★★ Hank says the news reported 'reports of car-sized drones'; there is plenty of evidence for the reports but he has found none for car-sized drones, though he had assumed they were real. — 00:04:22

    “there is plenty of evidence for reports of car-sized drones, but I haven't found any evidence of car-sized drones”

  • ★★ Hank notes that spreading sightings need not mean more objects: more people looking up, told to expect large drones, will misread more things, and that would also be geographically centered. — 00:05:21

  • ★★ Hank says that when we are primed to see a certain thing we are more likely to see it, which has been studied in many ways. — 00:05:50
  • ★ Hank cites priming studies: people are slow to identify a loaf of bread shown in a barn, and a flash of a threatening face makes neutral faces seem scary. — 00:05:50

00:06:19 — Misidentified videos: sped-up planes, a contrail, Hogan's stars, police drones, orbs as circles of confusion, hoaxes

  • ★★ Hank says a worrying video a friend sent him was a sped-up video of airplanes coming in to land in New Jersey. — 00:06:19
  • ★★ Hank says another video of something trailed in the sky shows a plane with a strangely oriented condensation trail, not a drone. — 00:06:49
  • ★★ Hank says the lights former Maryland governor Larry Hogan saw and tweeted turned out, a little embarrassingly, to be stars. (playful) — 00:06:49
  • ★★★ Hank says elected leaders telling people nothing is going on is wrong: nobody is fully sure what the first drones were, and people react badly to being told they're wrong by their representatives. — 00:07:18
  • ★★ Hank says police and maybe other agencies are sending up big drones to find the other drones, and these are then spotted and posted online. (hedged) — 00:07:47
  • ★★ Hank explains the orbs as out-of-focus points of light, called circles of confusion or blur spots, plus atmospheric wiggles and dirt on the lens. — 00:08:16
  • ★★ Hank says intentional hoaxes follow: a video taken credulously on TikTok came from an account that posted a very similar, clearly fake video. — 00:08:45 · TikTok
  • ★★ Hank says officials taking concerns seriously on the news sounds like 'this is serious', and sending drones up, which people hit with lasers, adds to the mess. — 00:09:15

00:09:36 — Political incentives to be loudly concerned and request drone detection systems

  • ★★★ Hank says it is good politics to be loudly concerned, oppose powerful people hiding things and demand a federal drone detection system, which makes it all seem a big deal. — 00:09:36
  • ★★ Hank thinks some of these politicians should be a bit ashamed of themselves. (hedged) — 00:10:05
  • ★★ Hank says the congressman who claimed an Iranian mothership did walk it back, and hopes it damages his credibility a bit. — 00:10:05

00:10:34 — What Hank does and does not know: secret projects possible, but timing, FAA lighting and history point to nothing nefarious

  • ★★ Hank says he doesn't know nothing weird is going on: perhaps a secret government project started it, though he'd expect secret tests in less populated areas. (hedged) — 00:11:04
  • ★★ Hank says he is certain the government experiments with drones the public does not know about. — 00:11:04
  • ★★ Hank says the objects are most often spotted between dusk and 11pm, when people are awake and it is dark, making it easy to mistake planes or small drones. — 00:11:04
  • ★★ Hank says the objects all use FAA-regulated lighting, which makes them very visible when turning the lights off would hide them. — 00:11:33
  • ★★ Hank says the regulated lighting makes it feel a lot less likely that this is anything nefarious. — 00:11:33
  • ★★ Hank says the third thing he knows is that people have a very long history of seeing things in the sky that freak them out and turn out to be nothing out of the ordinary. — 00:11:33

00:12:02 — Reveal: the opening was copied from the Wikipedia page on the 2019-2020 Colorado drone sightings, debunked by Vice

  • ★★★ Hank reveals the video's opening was copied from the Wikipedia page on the 2019-2020 Colorado drone sightings, and replays it. — 00:12:02 · Wikipedia
  • ★★ Hank says Vice then published 'The Colorado Mystery Drones Weren't Real', finding almost all sightings were commercial aircraft, stars, planets or small recreational drones. — 00:12:39
  • ★ Noting both incidents came around Christmas, Hank suggests parents may be testing their kids' new drones at night, and enjoying it. (hedged) — 00:12:39 · Christmas

00:13:09 — Aliens fill the space of 'I don't know'; Hank's tool of living with not knowing; we only learn by letting 'I don't know' exist

  • ★★★ Hank says he is not skeptical that aliens exist: there definitely are aliens in so large a universe; he has just seen no compelling evidence that they are here. — 00:13:09
  • ★★★ Hank says aliens always exist in unfalsifiable ways, covered up or able to turn invisible, and when they can be disproven we keep disproving them. — 00:13:09
  • ★★★ Hank says that in the space where 'I don't know' should live, people put aliens, and that it is always a mistake to treat 'I don't know' as a reason to believe you know. — 00:13:38
  • ★★ Hank says 'unidentified flying object' meant something unidentified, but people leapt from 'I don't know' to 'I do know' so UFO became a word for aliens. — 00:14:07
  • ★★ Hank says people send him weird internet videos and helping them understand their world is one of his jobs, which he loves. — 00:14:36
  • ★★ Hank's tool for unexplained sights: tell himself he doesn't know what it is but it is a physical phenomenon, then sometimes find the cause and sometimes live with not knowing. — 00:14:36
  • ★★★ Hank says answering 'I don't know' with something that could answer any question, as aliens can, stops the search and prevents new knowledge. — 00:15:05
  • ★★ Hank sums up what he does know: priming works, social contagions are often geographical, politicians have incentives to get on the news and the government to listen, and it is easy to treat "I don't know" as a sign something is hidden rather than a lack of information. — 00:15:34
  • ★★★ Hank closes that we are all people on a weird, amazing planet with drones, planes, cameras and media, and we only know any of it because we let 'I don't know' exist while figuring things out. — 00:16:25

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says Hank had not paid much attention, was shocked how different his perception was from the actual story, and found literally zero confirmed sightings of anything weird. — video description
  • ★ The description gives coupon code StrangeCloud at good.store for 10% off any gift card. — video description · Good Store
  • ★★ In a channel comment Hank says an orb zoomed in on by a news organization was an out-of-focus Venus. — creator comment
  • ★★ In a channel comment Hank says the likeliest outcome is people getting Christmas presents early and trying them out without knowing the local rules. (hedged) — creator comment · Christmas

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: 2024 New Jersey drone sightings · extraterrestrial life · Intellectual humility · unmanned aerial vehicle

Also: People: Donald Trump · Jeff Van Drew · Larry Hogan

Works: The Colorado Mystery Drones Weren't Real

Organizations: Federal Aviation Administration · TikTok · Twitter · Vice Media · Wikipedia

Concepts: circle of confusion · conspiracy theory · contrail · depth perception · Moon illusion · priming (psychology) · social contagion · unidentified flying object

Places: Iran · Maryland · New Jersey

Events: 2019-2020 Colorado drone sightings · Christmas · Killing of Brian Thompson

Only in the description or credits: Good Store · Venus

Also centred on extraterrestrial life: Where are the Space Aliens?! · We just had our first interstellar visitor...and it's weird. · They Say it Gets Colder · Aliens · Is it Good or Bad that we Haven't Met Aliens? · This Might Actually be Happening

Also centred on Intellectual humility: Towering Mountains of Ignorance · Does Human Life Have Real Meaning? · How's the Water? · The Assassination Attempt and the Comfort of Certainty

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