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?
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: