It’s more that at one point string theory abandoned the idea of testing reality since strings can’t be tested and just said: doesn’t matter, the maths do math and we keep expanding them.
But maths alone are not reality. Maths that can’t be tested are not science.
And this is why in one hand reality keeps throwing curve balls to Physics ,and on the other hand Physics is like “oh look, shiny maths!”.
As for the principle of authority of “they’re jet pilots!”… flying a jet doesn’t makes you an expert on knowing wtf are you looking at when you don’t know what you’re looking at. Doesn’t makes you an expert in optics, digital imaging, celestial phenomenons, and doesn’t turns what you don’t know what is into a non-human flying machine
There above, I had that discussion with the sphere some guy saw. A tethered balloon can be spherical and won’t move under the wind without visible means of propulsion.
Or the metal cylinder you saw, a mylar balloon can be cylindrical, metallic, and fly with no visible means of propulsion, at unknown distance because of unknown size and thus unknown velocity. Drifting by a wind at a different altitude and direction that what you experience on the surface.
(At one point, one often ridiculed for good reasons ufologist misidentified a stray horse-shaped party balloon for an actual horse trapped in an anti-gravity bubble)
As for aliens and ET… well, we human are hardwired to believe that our experience as toddlers is also real as adults. A superhuman power takes care of us and scares us and rewards us and punishes us.
Probably we wouldn’t believe in gods if we just hatched out of an egg… or our gods would be wildly different.
Now it’s aliens. They’re superpowered to us and will come to punish us or save us from our self-inflicted predicaments.
We just kind of hope “squeeze nipple, get food” was the only thing we needed to go through scary life and even scarier end of life.
Because we hope.
But the universe, you know, doesn’t owes anything. Mom does. Dad does. We human do owe to other human.
Because there’s nofuckinganyone else to care of us.
Or they’re so far and so as much alone and as frightened as us.
And now, here’s something from Ish for you.