Many people around the world believe that aliens live among us or have visited Earth at some point. By base rates, it’s not surprising that some of these people are high-ranking officials in the DoD or other governments.
Some of these officials have access to classified / non-public info, and are probably sincerely convinced that they have found strong evidence for aliens. But I haven’t seen anything to suggest that the publicly available information is actually strong evidence, nor that the believers with access to private information are particularly strong rationalists with well-calibrated priors and strong Bayesian updating skills. So the fact that they allegedly believe something isn’t much evidence that such a thing is true.
There’s a difference between vaguely believing in aliens and believing it with the specificity where you can say that there are 12 crafts in US possession. Especially, when the person makes those statements under oath.
Fortunately, it seems that there’s enough noise that Congress will hold a public inquiry and we will get better data.
Two of them have testified, including as recently as last year, to both AARO and Congress.
I think it’s plausible-to-likely that this testimony actually happened, and that if it did happen, that it’s very likely the officials who testified sincerely believe that they have observed strong, concrete evidence of alien spacecraft. Furthermore, I think it’s likely that there is actual material at the DoD and Lockheed which many people there believe is at least plausibly from aliens.
These officials are sticking their necks out and making honest, specific, and testable predictions. I confidently predict they’re all wrong, despite the fact that they access to more data than I do.
Why? I expect that most or all of these officials:
have not considered alternative hypotheses for their observations in enough detail and breadth.
have not explicitly considered the likelihood ratios given their observations for any alternate hypotheses they have thought of.
have bad priors about the topic (implicitly, I expect most are not thinking in terms of probabilities and Bayesian updates at all)
Note that my own prediction is based on priors, rather than looking into any of the specific claims or evidence available about aliens specifically. And the bullet points above apply more generally to the question of how to treat the beliefs of others, in terms of how much Bayesian evidence they are about the underlying belief.
“Should I be convinced?” Harry said. He didn’t look away. “Just because you believe it? Are you a strong enough rationalist now that your belief is strong evidence to me, because you’d be very unlikely to believe it if it weren’t true?
Many people around the world believe that aliens live among us or have visited Earth at some point. By base rates, it’s not surprising that some of these people are high-ranking officials in the DoD or other governments.
Some of these officials have access to classified / non-public info, and are probably sincerely convinced that they have found strong evidence for aliens. But I haven’t seen anything to suggest that the publicly available information is actually strong evidence, nor that the believers with access to private information are particularly strong rationalists with well-calibrated priors and strong Bayesian updating skills. So the fact that they allegedly believe something isn’t much evidence that such a thing is true.
Have you actually read the article?
There’s a difference between vaguely believing in aliens and believing it with the specificity where you can say that there are 12 crafts in US possession. Especially, when the person makes those statements under oath.
Fortunately, it seems that there’s enough noise that Congress will hold a public inquiry and we will get better data.
I think it’s plausible-to-likely that this testimony actually happened, and that if it did happen, that it’s very likely the officials who testified sincerely believe that they have observed strong, concrete evidence of alien spacecraft. Furthermore, I think it’s likely that there is actual material at the DoD and Lockheed which many people there believe is at least plausibly from aliens.
These officials are sticking their necks out and making honest, specific, and testable predictions. I confidently predict they’re all wrong, despite the fact that they access to more data than I do.
Why? I expect that most or all of these officials:
have not considered alternative hypotheses for their observations in enough detail and breadth.
have not explicitly considered the likelihood ratios given their observations for any alternate hypotheses they have thought of.
have bad priors about the topic (implicitly, I expect most are not thinking in terms of probabilities and Bayesian updates at all)
Note that my own prediction is based on priors, rather than looking into any of the specific claims or evidence available about aliens specifically. And the bullet points above apply more generally to the question of how to treat the beliefs of others, in terms of how much Bayesian evidence they are about the underlying belief.
To quote HPMOR: