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jsalvatier comments on NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life [link] - Less Wrong Discussion

1 Post author: Kevin 06 March 2011 10:22AM

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Comment author: jsalvatier 06 March 2011 06:34:24PM 2 points [-]

Hanson has a post on this. It seems to me that the chemical signature matching ancient life much better than recent life is really quite strong evidence.

Comment author: wedrifid 06 March 2011 08:51:15PM 3 points [-]

I like this quote from Hanson:

I’d bet these commentaries will mostly say this is interesting but doubts remain, that this evidence is too ordinary to support its “extraordinary” conclusion, and yet they’ll refuse to bet on the subject. How sad is that?

I'd really like to see Hanson put his money where his mouth is as in a clear, unambiguous and publicly available way. A decent figure (>=$1,000) at odds he considers favorable after considering this evidence and all his priors. That would be powerful advocacy of his most notable economics related there (prediction via markets).

This does not seem to be something that is especially easy to bet on practically. That is it would tie up capital basically until it was too late for Hanson to use it (he isn't especially young). A way to make long term bets like this in which the money is also invested in an index fund in the interim and pays dividends would be a valuable public service!