Rationalists should have mental models of the world that say if aliens/AI were out there, a few rare and poorly documented UFO encounters is not at all how we would find out. These stories are not worth the oxygen it takes to contemplate them.
In general, thinking more rationally can change confidence levels in only two directions: either toward more uncertainty or toward more certainty. Sometimes, rationalism says to open your mind, free yourself of prejudice, and overcome your bias. In these cases, you will be guided toward more uncertainty. Other time, rationalism says, c’mon, use your brain and think about the world in a way that’s deeply self-consistent and don’t fall for surface-level explanations. In these cases, you will be guided toward more certainty.
In my opinion, this is a case where rationalism should make us more certain, not less. Like, if there were aliens, is this really how we would find out? Obviously no.
The princeton-nimitz reports are unambiguously worth the oxygen it takes to contemplate them, given the consistency of the reports and the ramifications it would have even if it was “just” a human technology. So if you had the virtue of curiosity, you would contemplate it, and you would get led down the path that ends with the resolution that the “lie”, “mistake”, or “human technology” theories don’t really make deep sense either, and a rationalist does indeed have to start considering the other theory, that some aliens end up being much stranger than we would expect.
(But the path doesn’t really end there. It visits. And then, for me the path ended roughly with; it was probably a test of a pretty novel, surprising, but ultimately probably geopolitically unexciting human technology.)
Rationalists should have mental models of the world that say if aliens/AI were out there, a few rare and poorly documented UFO encounters is not at all how we would find out. These stories are not worth the oxygen it takes to contemplate them.
In general, thinking more rationally can change confidence levels in only two directions: either toward more uncertainty or toward more certainty. Sometimes, rationalism says to open your mind, free yourself of prejudice, and overcome your bias. In these cases, you will be guided toward more uncertainty. Other time, rationalism says, c’mon, use your brain and think about the world in a way that’s deeply self-consistent and don’t fall for surface-level explanations. In these cases, you will be guided toward more certainty.
In my opinion, this is a case where rationalism should make us more certain, not less. Like, if there were aliens, is this really how we would find out? Obviously no.
The princeton-nimitz reports are unambiguously worth the oxygen it takes to contemplate them, given the consistency of the reports and the ramifications it would have even if it was “just” a human technology. So if you had the virtue of curiosity, you would contemplate it, and you would get led down the path that ends with the resolution that the “lie”, “mistake”, or “human technology” theories don’t really make deep sense either, and a rationalist does indeed have to start considering the other theory, that some aliens end up being much stranger than we would expect.
(But the path doesn’t really end there. It visits. And then, for me the path ended roughly with; it was probably a test of a pretty novel, surprising, but ultimately probably geopolitically unexciting human technology.)