[walexander]

"Self-replicating probes could exhaustively explore a galaxy the size of the Milky Way in as little as a million years" - Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox]

The possibility of these things being extraterrestrial in origin does not seem that farfetched, honestly. If you assume something like a Von Neumann probe [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Vo...] to be possible (and I totally think one day we would make those), then the idea that someone else has already made one an that they are sitting around watching us, is not something that should be so easily dismissed.

No telling what these are, but I think the people assuming that some how human visual confirmation, video confirmation, multiple radar confirmation (on ship and in air), as well as Infrared confirmation of the same should shut up the "it's a camera artifact" or "sailor spinning tales" folks. Anyone care to do the math on how such a byzantine fault tolerant system could fail in so many different distinct cases over the last decade?

[gfodor]

If you assume a civilization (or AI singularity) eventually stops worrying about destroying itself, and the bulk of the risk to it stems from external civilizations unleashing galaxy destroying technologies (perhaps unintentionally), it seems logical that if a) such probes are technologically feasible and b) life can originate in places beyond Earth with some meaningful probability that you should expect to find a galaxy-wide network of autonomous probes specifically engineered to cut down the blast radius of these kinds of existentially risky technologies. Odds are, if that's what these are, they are old, autonomous, and should present evidence they are here to primarily prevent our mistakes from leaking across the galaxy, and secondarily perhaps to help preserve our civilization in those scenarios insofar as it is not in conflict with the primary objective.

[meowster]

Perhaps are afraid that making themselves known would increase the chances of others developing galaxy-destroying technologies.