these are high-ranking politicians who are potentially putting their career in jeopardy by giving credence to claims that are highly socially unacceptable and which leave them open to low-effort political attacks
They aren’t likely to face any difficulties with that, now that UFOs are topical their decision will be popular.
This isn’t independent evidence, it’s obviously a response to what’s happened before, and updating much on it would be a mistake.
My general view has NOT been that aliens are so super unlikely that I’m just not convinced by all the amazing evidence. Rather, it’s that the evidence quality so far has been low and filtered, and people updating a lot on it is a mistake. Analogy with psy: you can produce as big a stack of results with as low p-values as you want, but if evidence going the other way is filtered out and there’s room for randomness+mistakes, it all adds up to very little.
Full disclosure—I am one of the anti-UAP bettors.
P.S. I am much more interested in potential hard evidence, such as the alleged interstellar meteor residues Avi Loeb dredged up. Though, the filtered evidence issue remains—if you look long and hard enough for things “anomalous” you are likely to find them, even without alien origin, because the model you are using to determine what is “anomalous” is incomplete and because of possible evidence errors/misinterpretration which you will eventually make for some find. And if you are specifically looking for anomalies that seem to plausibly have an alien explanation, that’s what gets through the filter, even without aliens.
They aren’t likely to face any difficulties with that, now that UFOs are topical their decision will be popular.
This isn’t independent evidence, it’s obviously a response to what’s happened before, and updating much on it would be a mistake.
My general view has NOT been that aliens are so super unlikely that I’m just not convinced by all the amazing evidence. Rather, it’s that the evidence quality so far has been low and filtered, and people updating a lot on it is a mistake. Analogy with psy: you can produce as big a stack of results with as low p-values as you want, but if evidence going the other way is filtered out and there’s room for randomness+mistakes, it all adds up to very little.
Full disclosure—I am one of the anti-UAP bettors.
P.S. I am much more interested in potential hard evidence, such as the alleged interstellar meteor residues Avi Loeb dredged up. Though, the filtered evidence issue remains—if you look long and hard enough for things “anomalous” you are likely to find them, even without alien origin, because the model you are using to determine what is “anomalous” is incomplete and because of possible evidence errors/misinterpretration which you will eventually make for some find. And if you are specifically looking for anomalies that seem to plausibly have an alien explanation, that’s what gets through the filter, even without aliens.