To me, the UFO conundrum is one of the best scenarios to illustrate a concept that people are so easily ignoring in the way they think about ANY topic, not just aliens: gray areas. Too many people in the world believe in black or white solutions to everything. For instance, there's an abundance of people that think Democrats or Republicans are automatically right and the other is, thus, wrong, and there can't be a middle ground. Religion must either be right or wrong, no other option. Etc etc etc. So when it comes to aliens, a lot of people are under the impression that they either have to make a choice between "yes, aliens are real" or "no, aliens don't exist", but such a thing is foolish as it hinders logic.
As it stands right now, the general public has no official knowledge that extraterrestrials exist. By default, if forced to make a choice, we'd have to lean towards "they don't exist". But an argument people make less often than they should is that "innocent before proven guilty" works the same as "guilty before proven innocent". If you have no evidence one way or the other, you must remain skeptical.
UFOs, by definition, do exist. There's no question about it, and nobody can say otherwise. Why? Because the definition of a UFO is an object that is perceived to be flying and has yet to be identified. UFO doesn't automatically mean "alien spaceship", which a lot of people take it as.
UFOs are a complex category, as its most likely "all of the above". Some people flat out lie about seeing a UFO, making it a hoax. Some people see things and misinterpret it, whether its a normal airplane or just something wrong with your eyesight. We do have proof that the government tests experimental aircraft and that at times, these are reported as UFOs, so that has to be added into the equation. The government is up to more secret things than the average person is even remotely aware of in the slightest sense, so who knows what level it extends to? Could they be covering up actual alien products? Its certainly plausible.
Aliens...now this is where it gets tricky. My personal viewpoint is that we'd be foolish to believe that Earth is the only planet in the entire universe to support life, just by the sheer magnitude of the universe. If we don't even know for sure what Earth contains, how can we be sure of any other planets, any other solar systems, any other galaxies, etc? The public has not been told that aliens exist, but that doesn't mean that the government doesn't just lie about it. Of course, it doesn't mean that they DO lie about it, either. If aliens do exist, and they're visiting Earth, what would be the purpose? Do they do it just to study us like how we study creatures lower on the evolutionary scale than us? Do they actually influence events? Did they create us, or are they here to destroy us? Lol. It drives you nuts thinking about it.
Anyway, I'm starting to ramble just because I love the subject so much. All in all, I say UFOs should be treated the same way as a crime scene is: look at the situation, figure out all the possibilities, try to disprove and prove things, and keep an open mind. You may find out that the UFO is nothing more than an odd looking cloud, or it may be something from Skunk Works, or it may be something from Krypton for all we know lol.
