I’m actually really glad you posted this here, because I think it’s worth trying to hash out some of the specifics, and there are a couple things that make this stand out to me:
Grusch spent a long time going through proper channels first, including the ICIG and congress. The ICIG deemed his report credible and urgent (same as for Alex Vindman’s back in 2019). He testified to congress under oath, providing hundreds of pages worth of transcribed classified information.
The reporters on the story are not some cranked out whack jobs. Both of them were the reporters on the initial 2017 NYT article that got the ball rolling on all the latest UFO/UAP disclosures over the past 5-6 years.
I agree that the priors against this all being true are very high.
That said, the priors against this all being untrue seem at least a little bit lower considering the above.
Would love to hear others thoughts on these standout bits though. Especially #1. To my knowledge no prior claims of this sort have ever been scrutinized like that (let alone been called credible and urgent or been given hours before congressional intelligence committees). I think that does count for something, no?
Lots of claims have been scrutinized fairly intensely by governments. Was it the chilean military that spent a couple years investigating a UFO sighting and eventually went public saying it was unexplainable? Sadly, this effort provides little increase in reliability. The investigators are often doing this for the first time and lack key skills for analyzing the data. This is exacerbated by the fact that governments are large enough to allow for selection effects, where people spending effort investigating UFOs are self-selected for thinking they’re really important, i.e. aliens.
He testified under oath to the House and Senate intelligence committees, purportedly giving them hundreds of pages of documentation including specific names of programs and people to follow up on. All I’m saying is, AFAIK, no UFO claims have been under that level of scrutiny (in the US) before.
And to say that either the ICIG or the members of the House and Senate intelligence committees are either “first timers” w/r/t vetting claims like this or that they fall prey to selection effects for “people spending effort investigating UFOs” rings false to me.
The Intelligence Community Inspector General found his complaint “credible and urgent” in July 2022. According to Grusch, a summary was immediately submitted to the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines; the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Do we know precisely what “credible and urgent” actually means here? E.g., I can well imagine that “complaint comes from a high-ranking officer” is enough to qualify as “credible” and “complaint is of behaviour that would be extremely bad if true” is enough to qualify as “urgent”. The point is that these may well be terms of art that don’t carry any implication very close to “it is likely that the most incendiary bits of what’s alleged are true”.
See here for more information on what the process actually involves. You need provide information (“the right information to the right people”) that backs up what you’re saying. You can’t just make a claim and then they go “oh cool, we’ll check that out.” No, it’s much more like getting an indictment from a grand jury, you have to provide enough compelling evidence that you should be protected by this process and these statutes.
Additionally, the ICIG is allowed to see any and all classified information. The ICIG actually saw the classified stuff that David Grusch has and used that to determine their findings of “credible and urgent.”
This is literally just like when Alex Vindman came forward back in 2019. He didn’t just come out and say “yeah, they did some bad stuff, I think, yeah, I heard about it or something.” No, he was actually on the phone call.
So no source independent of the TheDebrief article? In this case, I would not use “according to the TheDebrief according to Grusch the ICIG...” article and “the ICIG...” the same way.
If we are doubtful of Grusch story, the fact that according to Grusch the ICIG found his claims “credible and urgent” provides us with little data.
Hopefully, congressman and journalists will ask the ICIG so we have independent evidence of that.
I don’t think it’s Grusch merely claiming that he went to the ICIG. I think it’s the reporters stating it.
And they did do a bunch of fact-checking (part 2) on the things they put out in the article. The fact-checking was done by The Debrief in addition to (and separately from) the fact-checking the reporters did themselves.
I don’t see why that part of the article should not be taken at face value. It would be incredibly stupid for any reasonable journalist or publication to print something like that that would be so easily disproved later down the line.
From part 2 linked above:
CP: You mentioned the Inspector General’s complaint. I know we’ll get a little more detail on that later. But towards that end, they write in the article here, “Although locations, program names, and other specific data remain classified, the Inspector General and intelligence committee staff were provided with these details. Several current members of the program spoke to the Inspector General’s office and corroborated the information Grusch had provided for the classified complaint.” Am I reading that correctly? That means people, “several current members of the program?” Meaning people that are directly involved with the supposed, alleged crash retrieval program spoke to the IGs office and corroborated his information?
TM: That’s correct. And that was another detail that was independently corroborated through individuals who would have been part of that process of the depositions and kind of interviewed in Congress and with the Inspector General’s office. There’s very tight-lipped information. But I was told, and it was corroborated, that additional eyewitnesses provided information in support, corroborating Grusch’s claims to General Counsel and to the Inspector General.
CP: Great. Great. That’s exactly what I was hoping to hear. All right, next fact here. “Grusch is represented by Charles McCullough III, senior partner of the Compass Rose Legal Group in Washington and the original Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2011. At that time, McCullough reported directly to the then-Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, and oversaw intelligence officers responsible for audits, inspections, and investigations.” Obviously, those are all public pieces of information. But are those things that you guys took the time to confirm?
TM: Yeah. I mean, Leslie and Ralph had that information from the attorney and everything. They had already confirmed with the attorney. Representative. Yeah. He just needed to advocate. But it is significant. In this case, if you want to piece an answer out of this, I’ll just say that I think that that was one of the highlights from where you saw this is legal representation…it’s somebody who’s very experienced in this arena and a very serious individual. All of this points to being a very serious matter and not some silly and some kind of goofy thing, even though people might have this idea of crashed UFOs and green men in their minds. The real facts of the case are being taken and treated very seriously.
CP: As a follow-up to that, are there consequences if he falsified the information he provided in his Inspector General complaint?
TM: Yes, absolutely. I mean, you know, obviously, the classified complaint is classified, and we haven’t seen that. But as a formality with any type of IG complaint, a person will be asked to not only provide their written affidavit complaint, so what came from the attorney, but they’ll also be asked to fill out a handwritten, “red tape” type procedure. And we do sign that form where it very clearly marked that you’re stating everything that you’re saying to be true. And if it’s not, or you’re intentionally lying, there are legal consequences. You’re lying to the federal government. And so, it’s as significant if not more than, say, filing a false police report, something like that. There are legal consequences for lying.
CP: So between his private closed-door sessions with congressional intelligence committees, which you just addressed, which involve legal jeopardy if he’s falsifying claims there, there’s also legal jeopardy if he’s falsifying claims to the IG. So if he is falsifying all of this, he’s set himself up for some serious pain from multiple locations.
The Independent is also reporting on this, if you want another source that now claims this unequivocally.
I don’t think you know what “prior” means. Prior to what update? “the priors against this all being untrue seem at least a little bit lower considering the above” Priors don’t change.
Sorry, definitely not the most proficient with the lingo. I believe I should have said:
“That said, considering the above, I would suspect updating your priors in the direction of this all being true, at least a little bit, seems reasonable.”
That phrasing makes it clear what is meant, but I think the phrase “updating your priors” is still carrying the confused terminology and we need to stop using it, again, priors don’t change in response to observations (though in physically constrained/embedded cognition [that is, the profane/imperfect/physically possible version of bayesian reasoning that physical human beings can do] there has to be some sense in which a prior can change in response to arguments/reasoning/reflection, which complicates the issue a lot).
The updated probability, P(Prior|Observation), is called the posterior. There would be less confusion carried by the phrasing “updating on your priors”, but I feel like it’d just collapse back to where it was.
I’m not sure anyone else has the notice when a word has implicit parameters (“prior” practically always does btw) and notice when the binding is ambiguous method yet so I feel it’s my responsibility.
I’m actually really glad you posted this here, because I think it’s worth trying to hash out some of the specifics, and there are a couple things that make this stand out to me:
Grusch spent a long time going through proper channels first, including the ICIG and congress. The ICIG deemed his report credible and urgent (same as for Alex Vindman’s back in 2019). He testified to congress under oath, providing hundreds of pages worth of transcribed classified information.
The reporters on the story are not some cranked out whack jobs. Both of them were the reporters on the initial 2017 NYT article that got the ball rolling on all the latest UFO/UAP disclosures over the past 5-6 years.
At least one senior ex-official (Christopher Mellon) is all but corroborating his claims.
I agree that the priors against this all being true are very high.
That said, the priors against this all being untrue seem at least a little bit lower considering the above.
Would love to hear others thoughts on these standout bits though. Especially #1. To my knowledge no prior claims of this sort have ever been scrutinized like that (let alone been called credible and urgent or been given hours before congressional intelligence committees). I think that does count for something, no?
Lots of claims have been scrutinized fairly intensely by governments. Was it the chilean military that spent a couple years investigating a UFO sighting and eventually went public saying it was unexplainable? Sadly, this effort provides little increase in reliability. The investigators are often doing this for the first time and lack key skills for analyzing the data. This is exacerbated by the fact that governments are large enough to allow for selection effects, where people spending effort investigating UFOs are self-selected for thinking they’re really important, i.e. aliens.
He testified under oath to the House and Senate intelligence committees, purportedly giving them hundreds of pages of documentation including specific names of programs and people to follow up on. All I’m saying is, AFAIK, no UFO claims have been under that level of scrutiny (in the US) before.
And to say that either the ICIG or the members of the House and Senate intelligence committees are either “first timers” w/r/t vetting claims like this or that they fall prey to selection effects for “people spending effort investigating UFOs” rings false to me.
Do you have a source for that?
From The Debrief article. Oh, and if you mean for the Alex Vindman claim, here’s a direct link to the ICIG report from 2019.
Edit: The Independent is now also reporting on this. As is The Guardian.
Do we know precisely what “credible and urgent” actually means here? E.g., I can well imagine that “complaint comes from a high-ranking officer” is enough to qualify as “credible” and “complaint is of behaviour that would be extremely bad if true” is enough to qualify as “urgent”. The point is that these may well be terms of art that don’t carry any implication very close to “it is likely that the most incendiary bits of what’s alleged are true”.
See here for more information on what the process actually involves. You need provide information (“the right information to the right people”) that backs up what you’re saying. You can’t just make a claim and then they go “oh cool, we’ll check that out.” No, it’s much more like getting an indictment from a grand jury, you have to provide enough compelling evidence that you should be protected by this process and these statutes.
Additionally, the ICIG is allowed to see any and all classified information. The ICIG actually saw the classified stuff that David Grusch has and used that to determine their findings of “credible and urgent.”
This is literally just like when Alex Vindman came forward back in 2019. He didn’t just come out and say “yeah, they did some bad stuff, I think, yeah, I heard about it or something.” No, he was actually on the phone call.
So no source independent of the TheDebrief article? In this case, I would not use “according to the TheDebrief according to Grusch the ICIG...” article and “the ICIG...” the same way.
If we are doubtful of Grusch story, the fact that according to Grusch the ICIG found his claims “credible and urgent” provides us with little data.
Hopefully, congressman and journalists will ask the ICIG so we have independent evidence of that.
I don’t think it’s Grusch merely claiming that he went to the ICIG. I think it’s the reporters stating it.
And they did do a bunch of fact-checking (part 2) on the things they put out in the article. The fact-checking was done by The Debrief in addition to (and separately from) the fact-checking the reporters did themselves.
I don’t see why that part of the article should not be taken at face value. It would be incredibly stupid for any reasonable journalist or publication to print something like that that would be so easily disproved later down the line.
From part 2 linked above:
The Independent is also reporting on this, if you want another source that now claims this unequivocally.
The paragraph you quoted contain “according to Grusch”. Generally, it’s unclear to me how easily the ICIG’s view can be accessed by journalists.
Yes, the source from The Independent/Guardian is good.
I don’t think you know what “prior” means. Prior to what update? “the priors against this all being untrue seem at least a little bit lower considering the above” Priors don’t change.
Sorry, definitely not the most proficient with the lingo. I believe I should have said:
“That said, considering the above, I would suspect updating your priors in the direction of this all being true, at least a little bit, seems reasonable.”
I think? Is that closer?
That phrasing makes it clear what is meant, but I think the phrase “updating your priors” is still carrying the confused terminology and we need to stop using it, again, priors don’t change in response to observations (though in physically constrained/embedded cognition [that is, the profane/imperfect/physically possible version of bayesian reasoning that physical human beings can do] there has to be some sense in which a prior can change in response to arguments/reasoning/reflection, which complicates the issue a lot).
The updated probability, P(Prior|Observation), is called the posterior. There would be less confusion carried by the phrasing “updating on your priors”, but I feel like it’d just collapse back to where it was.
Misusing the term prior is long-held LessWrong tradition
I’m going to put an end to it.
I’m not sure anyone else has the notice when a word has implicit parameters (“prior” practically always does btw) and notice when the binding is ambiguous method yet so I feel it’s my responsibility.