Glitches happen. Misunderstandings happen. Miscommunications happen. Coincidences happen. Weird-but-mundane things happen. Hoaxes happen. To use machine learning terminology, the real world occurs at temperature 1. We shouldn’t expect P[observations] to be high—that would require temperature less than 1. The question is, is P[observations] surprisingly low, or surprisingly high for some different paradigm, to such an extent as would provide strong evidence for something outside of current paradigms? My assessment is no. (see my discussion of Nimitz for example)
Some additional minor remarks specifically on P[aliens]:
non-detection of large (in terms of resource utilization) alien civilizations implies that the density of interstellar-spacefaring civilizations is low—I don’t expect non-expansion to be the common (let alone overwhelmingly selected) long term choice, and even aestivating civilizations should be expected to intervene to prevent natural entropy generation (such as by removing material from stars to shut them down)
If the great filter (apart from the possible filter against resource-utilization expansion by interstellar-spacefaring civilizations, which I consider unlikely to be a significant filter as mentioned above) is almost entirely in the abiogenesis step, and interstellar panspermia isn’t too hard, then it would make sense for a nearby civilization to exist as Robin Hanson points out. I do actually consider it fairly likely that a lot of the great filter is in abiogenesis, but note that there needs to be some combination of weak additional filter between abiogenesis and spacefaring civilization or highly efficient panspermia for this scenario to be likely.
If a nearby, non-expanding interstellar-spacefaring civilization did exist, then of course it could, if it so chose, mess with us in a way that left hints but no solid proof. They could even calibrate their hints across multiple categories of observations, and adjust over time, to match our capabilities. However, I don’t think them choosing to do this is particularly likely a priori. If someone assumes that such aliens exist and are responsible for UAPs, while also noting that we haven’t seen clear proof of their existence, then their posterior may assign a high probability to this—but I would caution against recycling the posterior into the prior.
(Edit: switched things around to put the important stuff in the first paragraph)
Glitches happen. Misunderstandings happen. Miscommunications happen. Coincidences happen. Weird-but-mundane things happen. Hoaxes happen. To use machine learning terminology, the real world occurs at temperature 1. We shouldn’t expect P[observations] to be high—that would require temperature less than 1. The question is, is P[observations] surprisingly low, or surprisingly high for some different paradigm, to such an extent as would provide strong evidence for something outside of current paradigms? My assessment is no. (see my discussion of Nimitz for example)
Some additional minor remarks specifically on P[aliens]:
non-detection of large (in terms of resource utilization) alien civilizations implies that the density of interstellar-spacefaring civilizations is low—I don’t expect non-expansion to be the common (let alone overwhelmingly selected) long term choice, and even aestivating civilizations should be expected to intervene to prevent natural entropy generation (such as by removing material from stars to shut them down)
If the great filter (apart from the possible filter against resource-utilization expansion by interstellar-spacefaring civilizations, which I consider unlikely to be a significant filter as mentioned above) is almost entirely in the abiogenesis step, and interstellar panspermia isn’t too hard, then it would make sense for a nearby civilization to exist as Robin Hanson points out. I do actually consider it fairly likely that a lot of the great filter is in abiogenesis, but note that there needs to be some combination of weak additional filter between abiogenesis and spacefaring civilization or highly efficient panspermia for this scenario to be likely.
If a nearby, non-expanding interstellar-spacefaring civilization did exist, then of course it could, if it so chose, mess with us in a way that left hints but no solid proof. They could even calibrate their hints across multiple categories of observations, and adjust over time, to match our capabilities. However, I don’t think them choosing to do this is particularly likely a priori. If someone assumes that such aliens exist and are responsible for UAPs, while also noting that we haven’t seen clear proof of their existence, then their posterior may assign a high probability to this—but I would caution against recycling the posterior into the prior.
(Edit: switched things around to put the important stuff in the first paragraph)