there’s a sort of anthropic issue where if we already had compelling evidence (or no evidence) we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Yes, our discussion is based on the evidence we actually see. But, to then discount the evidence because if we had different evidence we wouldn’t be having the same discussion, is to rule out updating on evidence at all, if that evidence would influence our discussion.
Is there a prior for the likely resolution of fuzzy evidence in general?
In my view, there is a general tendency to underestimate the likelihood of encountering weird-seeming evidence, and especially of encountering it indirectly via a filtering process where the weirdest and most alien-congruent evidence (or game-of-telephone enhanced stories) gets publicly disseminated. For this reason, a bunch of fuzzy evidence is not particularly strong evidence for aliens.
Yes, our discussion is based on the evidence we actually see. But, to then discount the evidence because if we had different evidence we wouldn’t be having the same discussion, is to rule out updating on evidence at all, if that evidence would influence our discussion.
In my view, there is a general tendency to underestimate the likelihood of encountering weird-seeming evidence, and especially of encountering it indirectly via a filtering process where the weirdest and most alien-congruent evidence (or game-of-telephone enhanced stories) gets publicly disseminated. For this reason, a bunch of fuzzy evidence is not particularly strong evidence for aliens.