This thread has mostly taken the form of "LessWrong tells loldrup why he is wrong," which has the unfortunate side effeect of making it very difficult to admit you are wrong, even if you later encounter evidence that you would have otherwise considered convincing.
What would you consider good evidence that there are no aliens on Earth?
good question. What would make me think black swans didn't exist if I had already seen one? The thing is, its hard to prove that something doesn't exist - you would at least have to turn every stone and every cloud on the planet.
Recently I've been struck with a belief in Aliens being present on this Earth. It happened after I watched this documenary (and subsequently several others). My feeling of belief is not particular interesting in itself - I could be lunatic or otherwise psychological dysfunctional. What I'm interested in knowing is to what extend other people, who consider themselves rationalists, feel belief in the existence of aliens on this earth, after watching this documentary. Is anyone willing to try and watch it and then report back?
Another question arising in this matter is how to treat evidence of extraordinary things. Should one require 'extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims'? I somehow feel that this notion is misguided - it discriminates evidence prior to observation. That is not the right time to start discriminating. At most we should ascribe a prior probability of zero and then do some Bayesian updating to get a posterior. Hmm, if no one has seen a black swan and some bayesian thinking person then sees a black swan a) in the distance or b) up front, what will his a posterior probability of the existence of black swans then be?