Isn't that the exact opposite of Occam's razor? There is no faster than light travel, change my mind....
crickets....you got nothing except hope.
The next level of the argument is this: a race of beings that can travel the speed of light and/or live for 81,000 years would have nothing to say to us, no means of communicating to us, and no reason to share or negotiate anything. We would seem like bacteria to them at best. If they did arrive, they could surely never crash or be shot down, considering their abilities.
Extraterrestrial life is an absolute statistical certainty. Intergalactic travel however, cannot happen according to every shred of evidence accrued by human existence. But don't let that stop you.
Occam's razor is a rule of thumb that says one should prefer a simpler explanation to a more complex one if it is sufficient to explain the observations completely. Occam's razor is not a rule that determines what is real. It's a rule that we use to simplify our explanations if they get unnecessarily complicated. In the case of history, a common example is heliocentrism vs geocentrism. The parsimonious explanation is the orbit of the sun rather than the earth.
With regards to the UFO phenomenon we are discussing multiple hypotheses. One of these is the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. (ETH) There are enough observations in the UFO phenomenon that make it extremely difficult to rely on solely natural explanations for the phenomenon. There are certainly cases where the phenomenon is a misidentification but there are also cases which defy such explanations. There are multiple possible explanations and each scenario is different.
It's certainly possible that some of these observations are the result of human technology. (i.e. government secrets) But it's also apparent that some of these observations don't fit any physics that we can currently assign to even the most hidden of dark projects that humans might have created. In that sense, parsimony actually works in a multivariant way and sometimes the ETH explanation is actually simpler than any of the others.
The overarching tendency of many non-UFO accepting researchers, however, is to pigeonhole all observations as some kind of contrivance like "swamp gas" which are often insufficient to explain the data or are simply bullshit. Science doesn't work by consensus of experts. Science works by admitting our ignorance and coming up with models to explain the observations.
You admit that other intelligent species probably exist. The universe is billions of years old. Why do you assume then that it is impossible for them to be more advanced in science than us? Why do you assume that our methods of physics are the necessarily the most complete? There's a whole lot we don't know about in science. Dark Energy or the physics of Singularities ring a bell? Perhaps someone else has found methods to use physics that are not subject to the limitations that we find in our methods? That's not a thing you can assume is false just on the basis of your preference. You don't know what other species would do with their physics.
And who says other species would want to communicate with us? Maybe they they see us as a resource to exploit for their own gain? Maybe they put us under a quarantine and treat us like we treat zoo animals? You don't know.
And who knows? Just because you're more advanced doesn't make you immune to attacks. Native Americans were able to harm Conquistators despite a huge technology difference. Maybe the little human plains apes just got lucky once or twice.
Isn't that the exact opposite of Occam's razor? There is no faster than light travel, change my mind.... crickets....you got nothing except hope. The next level of the argument is this: a race of beings that can travel the speed of light and/or live for 81,000 years would have nothing to say to us, no means of communicating to us, and no reason to share or negotiate anything. We would seem like bacteria to them at best. If they did arrive, they could surely never crash or be shot down, considering their abilities. Extraterrestrial life is an absolute statistical certainty. Intergalactic travel however, cannot happen according to every shred of evidence accrued by human existence. But don't let that stop you.
Occam's razor is a rule of thumb that says one should prefer a simpler explanation to a more complex one if it is sufficient to explain the observations completely. Occam's razor is not a rule that determines what is real. It's a rule that we use to simplify our explanations if they get unnecessarily complicated. In the case of history, a common example is heliocentrism vs geocentrism. The parsimonious explanation is the orbit of the sun rather than the earth.
With regards to the UFO phenomenon we are discussing multiple hypotheses. One of these is the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. (ETH) There are enough observations in the UFO phenomenon that make it extremely difficult to rely on solely natural explanations for the phenomenon. There are certainly cases where the phenomenon is a misidentification but there are also cases which defy such explanations. There are multiple possible explanations and each scenario is different.
It's certainly possible that some of these observations are the result of human technology. (i.e. government secrets) But it's also apparent that some of these observations don't fit any physics that we can currently assign to even the most hidden of dark projects that humans might have created. In that sense, parsimony actually works in a multivariant way and sometimes the ETH explanation is actually simpler than any of the others.
The overarching tendency of many non-UFO accepting researchers, however, is to pigeonhole all observations as some kind of contrivance like "swamp gas" which are often insufficient to explain the data or are simply bullshit. Science doesn't work by consensus of experts. Science works by admitting our ignorance and coming up with models to explain the observations.
You admit that other intelligent species probably exist. The universe is billions of years old. Why do you assume then that it is impossible for them to be more advanced in science than us? Why do you assume that our methods of physics are the necessarily the most complete? There's a whole lot we don't know about in science. Dark Energy or the physics of Singularities ring a bell? Perhaps someone else has found methods to use physics that are not subject to the limitations that we find in our methods? That's not a thing you can assume is false just on the basis of your preference. You don't know what other species would do with their physics.
And who says other species would want to communicate with us? Maybe they they see us as a resource to exploit for their own gain? Maybe they put us under a quarantine and treat us like we treat zoo animals? You don't know.
And who knows? Just because you're more advanced doesn't make you immune to attacks. Native Americans were able to harm Conquistators despite a huge technology difference. Maybe the little human plains apes just got lucky once or twice.