Thank you for kickstarting an interesting discussion around this topic. I won’t bet against you; I, too, think most LessWrongers dramatically underestimate the plausibility of the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
The UK’s Project Condign concluded UAP were real and exotic, but were unknown natural atmospheric plasma phenomena (similar to the Hessdalen lights and reports of black or metallic-appearing ball lightning) generating electromagnetic fields that interact with human brains to induce psychedelic/out-of-body experiences (hence alien abduction and close encounter reports). Would this category of explanation (something that accounted for most or all weird aspects of the UFO phenomenon without being especially ontologically shocking in retrospect) count as “very weird,” in your view?
Thank you for kickstarting an interesting discussion around this topic. I won’t bet against you; I, too, think most LessWrongers dramatically underestimate the plausibility of the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
The UK’s Project Condign concluded UAP were real and exotic, but were unknown natural atmospheric plasma phenomena (similar to the Hessdalen lights and reports of black or metallic-appearing ball lightning) generating electromagnetic fields that interact with human brains to induce psychedelic/out-of-body experiences (hence alien abduction and close encounter reports). Would this category of explanation (something that accounted for most or all weird aspects of the UFO phenomenon without being especially ontologically shocking in retrospect) count as “very weird,” in your view?