We’re still doing this? Fine. No need to arrange any odds or payment methods or your bankroll limits, I’m willing to just commit my money:
In 5 years, if it has become a scientific consensus that any of the past UFO observations are extraterrestrial intelligent aliens, I will straight up just send $1,000 to any place Tyler Cowen or Robin Hanson† or RatsWrongAboutUAP choose.
(If space aliens are semi-consensus and I weasel out of it anyway, then you will have to settle for laughing at me online.)
While we’re on the topic: in addition to the NY Post expose on the toxic stew of fraud, quasi-embezzlement, abuse of classification, echo chambers, and misinterpreted Chinese spy balloon references (carrying water for a dictatorship), which manufactured most of the recent UFO craze, today the NYT has a profile of Avi Loeb which helps explain where a lot of this UFO noise is coming from: rich old techies subsidizing intellectual hobbies (perhaps due to deep emotional attachment to the belief there must be biological aliens like us out there, we have to be going to the stars, it can’t just be that we’re going to get to AGI and render the whole thing moot). In addition to Yuri Milner, whose role is well-known, there’s also a “Eugene Jhong” who is a ‘software engineer’ I’ve never heard of but who has put at least $1.2m into Loeb’s aliens*, and Charles Hoskinson (Ethereum) appears to be putting in millions, at least, in bankrolling Loeb’s recent oceanographic expedition to find UFO crash debris ($1.5m there alone in addition to use of his private jet).
* He has also apparently put $1.5m into DMT psychedelic research, which seems like a better topic to research…
† Inasmuch as they are the most notable public figures in our circles in terms of I’m-not-saying-it’s-aliens-but-it’s-aliens, which isn’t fooling anyone, so it seems only fair to let them pick if they are ultimately vindicated.
codyz is doubling down on the UFO claims, but as far as I can see, the case has fallen apart so completely no one even wants to discuss it and even Tyler Cowen & Robin Hanson have stopped nudge-nudge-wink-winking it for now.
We’re still doing this? Fine. No need to arrange any odds or payment methods or your bankroll limits, I’m willing to just commit my money:
(If space aliens are semi-consensus and I weasel out of it anyway, then you will have to settle for laughing at me online.)
While we’re on the topic: in addition to the NY Post expose on the toxic stew of fraud, quasi-embezzlement, abuse of classification, echo chambers, and misinterpreted Chinese spy balloon references (carrying water for a dictatorship), which manufactured most of the recent UFO craze, today the NYT has a profile of Avi Loeb which helps explain where a lot of this UFO noise is coming from: rich old techies subsidizing intellectual hobbies (perhaps due to deep emotional attachment to the belief there must be biological aliens like us out there, we have to be going to the stars, it can’t just be that we’re going to get to AGI and render the whole thing moot). In addition to Yuri Milner, whose role is well-known, there’s also a “Eugene Jhong” who is a ‘software engineer’ I’ve never heard of but who has put at least $1.2m into Loeb’s aliens*, and Charles Hoskinson (Ethereum) appears to be putting in millions, at least, in bankrolling Loeb’s recent oceanographic expedition to find UFO crash debris ($1.5m there alone in addition to use of his private jet).
* He has also apparently put $1.5m into DMT psychedelic research, which seems like a better topic to research…
† Inasmuch as they are the most notable public figures in our circles in terms of I’m-not-saying-it’s-aliens-but-it’s-aliens, which isn’t fooling anyone, so it seems only fair to let them pick if they are ultimately vindicated.
codyz is doubling down on the UFO claims, but as far as I can see, the case has fallen apart so completely no one even wants to discuss it and even Tyler Cowen & Robin Hanson have stopped nudge-nudge-wink-winking it for now.
So I hereby double my unilateral bet to $2,000.