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From the point of view of a decision maker in the government, sure, I agree. From my viewpoint it makes little difference; if it's just some random crazy guy, it's not worth explaining, and if it's a conspiracy of some sort to forge this information for NatSec purposes, then odds are the committee would end up bending over to it or being fooled as well. Either way, I'm not going to know anything for sure until there's some actual disclosure of some actual things that can't be explained in any other ways than aliens or an equally extraordinary phenomenon. Until then, it's a non-issue for me; it's neither actionable nor verifiable, so ignoring it makes perfect sense.

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3 Dealing with UFO claims

by ChristianKl

10th Jun 2023

1 min read

3

A common response in the recent LessWrong threads about UFO's is rationalists immediately going into a state of wanting to translate the news into probabilities of the existence of aliens instead of taking the facts for what they are and thinking about what should happen based on the revealed facts.

According to Ross Coulthart, David Grusch gave the ICIG, Congress and the Senate, the location where the vehicles are stored and the names of the people who control access to those programs.

While I would like to know whether or not aliens visited earth, I think it's more useful to simply take the stance "I don't know" instead of thinking in terms of probability.

From the "I don't know"-stance, the next step is obvious: There need to be congressional hearings where the people who were named has being in control of access to those programs get asked in public about the nature of those programs.

Given that there seem to be powerful people in the intelligence community who want to block public exposure of whatever the nature of those programs are, it's important that there's public pressure on Congress to investigate and hold public hearings that go into the details.

The mental moves of directly rounding down to "my priors against aliens are high" -> "no aliens" -> "no need to do anything" is bad as if enough people hold it we won't get more evidence.

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[-]Dagon2y239

"I don't know" -> "the best next step is congressional hearings" is QUITE a leap, and includes a whole lot of underlying probability assignments. AT LEAST it implies that the probability is high enough to spend effort on, and that somehow congress can dissolve a conspiracy that's lasted decades.

Personally, I still assign a vanishingly low probability to aliens. But I assign enough probability to more prosaic malfeasance (military or private-group technology and behavior, and conspiracy to mislead both the public and the leadership of multiple countries including the conspirators' own and allies) that I'd be happy to see investigations into it. I don't know that public hearings are likely to be effective - some mix of private/journalistic investigation and still-secret-but-more-formal government investigation would be my best guess.

Moreover, I assign a very low probability that MY effort spent on the topic matters very much. I'm pretty much thinking about it for entertainment purposes.

[-]ChristianKl2y73

somehow congress can dissolve a conspiracy that's lasted decades

That's what the Church commission did.

Moreover, I assign a very low probability that MY effort spent on the topic matters very much.

That's the question about whether voting in a Democracy matters.

[-]Max H2y205

Here's one plausible alternative explanation of the facts that I happened to come across on Twitter: https://twitter.com/erikphoel/status/1667197430197022722

While I would like to know whether or not aliens visited earth, I think it's more useful to simply take the stance "I don't know" instead of thinking in terms of probability.

You can't really "not think in terms of probability" by refusing to think about them explicitly. It can sometimes be a useful exercise to think about or write down everything in terms of numerical probabilities and likelihoods and then throw that away and "go with your gut", but if your beliefs are coherent they imply an underlying probabilistic model, whether you acknowledge it or not.

The mental moves of directly rounding down to "my priors against aliens are high" -> "no aliens" -> "no need to do anything" is bad as if enough people hold it we won't get more evidence.

Investigating the question of whether aliens have visited earth may be valuable enough to overcome the low prior. However, I predict in advance that congressional hearings are not going to yield much evidence on this question one way or the other, unless they're focused on investigating e.g. the specific claims in the tweet thread above. In general, these kinds of hearings are not known for their truth-seeking or fact-finding ability.

[-]Evan R. Murphy2y60

Re: the tweet thread you linked to. One of the tweets is:

Given that the DoD was effectively infiltrated for years by people "contracting" for the government while researching dino-beavers, there are now a ton of "insiders" who can "confirm" they heard the same outlandish rumors, leading to stuff like this: [references Michael Schellenberger]

Maybe, but this doesn't add up to me because Schellenberger said his sources had had multiple decades long careers in the gov agencies. It didn't sound like they just started their careers as contractors in 2008-2012.

Link to post with Schellenberger article details: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bhH2BqF3fLTCwgjSs/michael-shellenberger-us-has-12-or-more-alien-spacecraft-say

[-]ChristianKl2y59

You can't really "not think in terms of probability" by refusing to think about them explicitly.

That's just mistakes how the human mind and human intelligence works. Our brain is not made to think in terms of probability.

if your beliefs are coherent they imply an underlying probabilistic model, whether you acknowledge it or not.

I think that most people who think that their beliefs are completely coherent delude themselves. Assuming that beliefs being completely coherent is a natural state of the human mind mistakes a lot about what goes on in human minds. When building an AI for a long-time there was the belief that AI will likely have coherent beliefs. With GPT we see that the best intellience we can build on computers doesn't seem to have that feature of coherent beliefs either.

Julia Galef writes about how noticing confusion is a key skill of a rationalist. The state of noticing confusion is one where you see that the evidence doesn't seem to really fit and you don't have a good idea of the right hypothesis.

Confusion calls for more investigation. It's normal that you don't have clear hypnothesis when you investigate when you are confused.

Thomas Kuhn writes about how new scientific paradigms always start with seeing some anamolies and investigating them. If you don't engage in that investigation because you don't have a decent probability hypothesis of how the facts fit together, you are not going to find new paradigms because that involves working a decent amount of time in a space with a lot of unknowns.

[-]Max H2y30

That's just mistakes how the human mind and human intelligence works. Our brain is not made to think in terms of probability.

I didn't intend to claim anything about how the brain or human intelligence works. Rather, I'm saying probability theory points at a correct way to reason for ideal agents, which humans can try to approximate. I expect approximations which involve thinking explicitly in terms of probabilities (not necessarily only in terms of probabilities) will tend to outperform approximations that don't.

Anyway, back to the object level: I would welcome more evidence on the question of aliens, but I personally don't feel that confused by current observations, and believe they are well-explained by higher prior probability hypotheses that do not involve aliens.

Perhaps the reason this post received some downvotes: it reads somewhat as a call for others to do expensive investigatory work and / or deductive thinking. Personally, I feel I've already done enough investigation and deduction on my own on this topic, and more (by myself or others) is probably not worth the effort.

Note, there's sometimes a tradeoff between gathering more facts and thinking longer to deduce more from the facts you already have. In this case, I think there's already more than enough evidence available for an ideal agent to conclude from a cursory inspection that the observed evidence is not well-explained by actual aliens. But you don't need to be an ideal agent to draw similar conclusions: you merely need to apply some effort and reasoning skills which are pretty common among LW readers, but not so common outside these circles (some of the skills I have in mind are those described by the bullet points in my reply here.)

[-]ChristianKl2y44

Rather, I'm saying probability theory points at a correct way to reason for ideal agents, which humans can try to approximate.

Probability theory does not do that. It does not make your reasoning robust against unknown unknowns.

In this case, I think there's already more than enough evidence available for an ideal agent to conclude from a cursory inspection that the observed evidence is not well-explained by actual aliens.

From my perspective it doesn't look like there is an explanation that well-explains the available evidence. That goes both for alien-involving explanations and for non-alien-involving explanations. That's what makes the situation confusing.

But you don't need to be an ideal agent to draw similar conclusions: you merely need to apply some effort and reasoning skills which are pretty common among LW readers, but not so common outside these circles

I'm unsure why you believe that LW readers are that much better at reasoning than highly promoted intelligence analysts.

[-]avturchin2y20

I see problem with the tweet thread that the main evidence it uses against UFO-cases is impossibility of dyno-bevers. But most plausible explanation is glitches in the matrix, and such glitches would equally likely create 'alien crafts' and 'dyno-bevers'. Both are equally absurd.

[-]Vladimir_Nesov2y20

more useful to simply take the stance "I don't know"

if your beliefs are coherent they imply an underlying probabilistic model

Decision making motivates having some way of conditioning beliefs on influence at given points of intervention, that's how you estimate the consequences of those interventions and their desirability. To take a stance of "don't know" seems to me analogous to considering how a world model varies with (depends on) the thing you don't know, how it depends on what it turns out to be, or on what the credences about the facts surrounding it are.

[-]Shmi2y125

The mental moves of directly rounding down to "my priors against aliens are high" -> "no aliens" -> "no need to do anything" is bad as if enough people hold it we won't get more evidence.

Extraordinary clams require extraordinary evidence. Words are not extraordinary evidence, they are just words. Sworn testimonies, documents, blurry images... They are not extraordinary evidence.

Until and unless something like this surfaces:

"here is a sketch of the propulsion system they used, and this is all totally new and revolutionary" or

"here is a radiation shielding material that is leaps and bounds ahead of our material science" or

"here is a sample of their tissues, it converts energy into matter in ways we never conceived of"

I will keep calling BS on just words.

[-]ChristianKl2y32

The stated goal of the current reporting is to get the Congress to investigate the charges. It's not to convince people of aliens.

I think Michio Kaku frames it well. "Now the burden of proof has shifted." Now is the time to demand answer from the pentagon and Congress.

[-]Shmi2y105

Michio Kaku is a crackpot who used to be a physicist decades ago, so pay no attention to whatever he says these days. See the latest Scott Aaronson's piece.

The stated goal of the current reporting is to get the Congress to investigate the charges. It's not to convince people of aliens.

I am not sure what your point is. If there are no aliens, there is nothing to report. If there are aliens, what matters is the proof that is not words.

[-]Vladimir_Nesov2y102

"my priors against aliens are high" -> "no aliens" -> "no need to do anything"

More carefully, value of information is about how credences change in response to outcomes of feasible things that can be done, not about what the credences are a priori.

[-]mako yass2y40

I haven't seen any civilians, including on LW, actually weigh the cost of assymetric disclosure of US military R&D, which this would probably require? So I think you're really going to have to systematize this framework a bit more before you can justify the lets see them aliens stance.

I'd instead call for a simultaneous disclosure of superpower military R&D from all sides, primarily to halt the omnicidal arms-racing dynamics we're all currently living under, and I really mean that, but by the way, this policy would also justify seeing the aliens.

[-]ChristianKl2y20

I'd instead call for a simultaneous disclosure of superpower military R&D from all sides

When calling for action then it's worth thinking about possible next steps. I don't see possible next steps for simultaneous disclosure of superpower military R&D from all sides.

I haven't seen any civilians, including on LW, actually weigh the cost of assymetric disclosure of US military R&D, which this would probably require?

I do believe that it's good to empower whistleblowers. If certain secrets are very important to a country then it should be able to convince all the people who hold the secrets to keep them secret.

In this case, we seem to have information that's illegally withheld from Congress and multiple people speaking to the ICIG who think that's a problem.

The Above the Law article suggests that illegal withholding takes place. In a Democracy, the miliary has to share its secrets with Congress (or at least the committees of Congress that relate to it).

[-]mako yass2y30

Yes, if this has truly never reached congress. Kinda under the impression that some congress members (especially presidents) have probably seen it, and for whatever reason, once they knew, all of these people decided not to publicize it.
And that could just keep happening.

[-]ChristianKl2y40

We do have the account from Harry Reid, who did decide to publicize that he thinks Lockheed Martin had the crafts and the military didn't want to give him the clearance to see them.

It's worthwhile to note that Harry Reid did not share that information this way before he retired. There's a massive stereotype against taking UFO's seriously and sharing such information was bad politics.

[-]mako yass2y20

Does he say thought they had crafts? There's a line where he says he was never sure.

[-]ChristianKl2y42

He said that people told them were the craft were but he had no direct proof of them. I don't see a reason to assume that there were Congressman better informed than him.

[-]mako yass2y20

I'm learning that presidents are explicitly excluded from the category of congressmembers.

[-]mako yass2y20

I don't see possible next steps for simultaneous disclosure of superpower military R&D from all sides.

This might not be possible until the danger of arms-races in agentic AI has become more obvious. I'm not familiar enough with the nuclear situation to say whether it's feasible today, but it probably will be at some point in the near future.

It seems probable to me that monitoring has, over the past 40 years, become a lot cheaper and more feasible than our geopolitical institutions recognize.

Increases in mutual transparency may have to come in train with assurances that the balance of power will be preserved in light of whatever's discovered. Geopolitical pluralism may turn out to depend on mutual uncertainty about who would win a war. With increases in transparency, there's a risk that this veil falls away, which is good for the victor, but so terrible for everyone else, that the veil must not be threatened without such assurances.

[-]ChristianKl2y40

In recent news: China rejects nuclear talks with the U.S. as it looks to strengthen its own arsenal

There's currently that war going on in Ukraine.

[-]avturchin2y20

"my priors against aliens are high" -> "no aliens" -> "no need to do anything" is bad

The priors against aliens should be indeed high, but there could be many other hypothesis which generates observation of objects which looks like alien crafts, and some of them are

interstellar animals similar to chameleons which poorly mimic anything they see
lobotomized nanotech-based berserkers trying to stop AI development
interdimensional tourists and hobbists
glitches in GPT-9 where we happened to live as half-activated patterns
effects of distorted observation in consciousness-causes-collapse interpretation quantum mechanics
psyop war between US, Russia and China, similar to number stations.

[-]ChristianKl2y63

All of those options would also be very interesting to find out of a public investigation.

[-]dr_s2y10

The mental moves of directly rounding down to "my priors against aliens are high" -> "no aliens" -> "no need to do anything" is bad as if enough people hold it we won't get more evidence.

Well, but my priors against aliens are high. The belief that inevitably still takes precedence due to very high priors until some actual hard evidence comes up is "someone is making up bullshit, either on purpose or because they're delusional or stupid". Plenty of "insiders" sometimes spout complete nonsense in order to get some time in the limelight. The moment I see an actual craft flying by some actual unknown mechanisms, then I start considering more serious options (and aliens aren't the first one anyway).

[-]ChristianKl2y41

Plenty of "insiders" sometimes spout complete nonsense in order to get some time in the limelight.

The sources of Michael Shellenberger were not willing to have their names revealed. Even if you think that's the motivation for David Grusch it does not explain the other sources.

[-]dr_s2y53

It doesn't really matter, any motivations from "someone wants to cause chaos" to "someone is literally crazy" to "the CIA is playing an elaborate distraction game as part of some other plan" are by definition more plausible than something like alien crafts traversing interstellar space unobserved and coming to spy on us and nothing else. Anything that only involves humans and doesn't require new undiscovered laws of physics to be realistic wins the Bayes lottery by orders of magnitude.

[-]ChristianKl2y42

Right now the important distinction is "Is there an explanation that warrants further investigation" or "Is there no explanation that warrants further investigation". It's not "Are there aliens or not".

[-]dr_s2y20

[-]ChristianKl2y20

I think that public pressure has an effect on Congress and the depth to which it investigates issues.

Congressmen who drive such inquiries care about what their voters and the media think about them pursuing it.

[-]dr_s2y20

I'm not in the US so this doesn't really apply to me, but in general, insofar as public pressure goes, there's probably a dozen more important issues to spend that political capital on than UFOs. Again, I'll consider it important if there's ever any independent evidence that this is a thing. Absent that, I accept the risk that I may indeed be ignoring the most important and perfect cover-up in history, but my bet is still solidly on it being a nothingburger.

[-]drethelin2y31

Plenty of people love to be anonymous trolls.

In addition, having information from anonymous sources casts doubt on whether those sources exist at all, or are credible individuals rather than trolls

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