4 ms·

It is commonly said extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Much less commonly said, but still true, is that extraordinary claims require extraord

by jerf 3y ago

It is commonly said extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Much less commonly said, but still true, is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary trust. I do not trust the people saying these things. That I can not 100% guess their motivations for this is not particularly relevant. They have a long history of consistent and large lies. Failing to take that into account when they're making this sort of claim is foolishness. In fact at this point they're really in a Catch-22... if they really do try to come out with "Yes! Aliens! Really!" then we have the question of, why then were you lying the up to this point then? Because if they are real you've been lying and lying and lying and lying beyond my capacity to express in a single sentence... why should I trust you now, then? I mean, it isn't that hard to imagine how "alien threat!" will require us to, once again, give them more power. It's absolutely astonishing how no matter what the problem is, the solution is to give them more power.

alehlopeh 3y ago
A credible alien threat would give world leaders a super easy excuse to demand emergency powers, impose martial law, and assume total control of all aspects of life, in the name of the war effort. Said world leaders really really want these things, so you can safely assume there isn’t a credible alien threat. You don’t have to trust them, just trust that they’ll act in their own interests and work backwards from there.
- willis936 3y ago
  I believe this was the plot to Watchmen.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    I don't think it was. Could be a great piece of fiction based on COVID lockdowns though.
    - Jtsummers 3y ago
      It was a key element of Watchmen. The movie changed the common enemy from aliens, but kept the general concept. It wasn't the governments that created it, but rather the governments were duped into believing it.
      - CamperBob2 3y ago
        Interesting problem in orbital mechanics, suitable for the Musks and Bezoses of the world: calculate parameters for satellite launch, insertion, and stationkeeping needed to simulate seemingly-irrefutable signals from an intelligent ET civilization.
        AtlasBarfed 3y ago
        That was the coverup of Contact the movie version.
        CamperBob2 3y ago
        Potentially, but we never found out for sure. Now there are multiple private teams who could actually pull it off. Or maybe not... I have no idea how hard it would be to make a signal source appear from Earth as if it came from a fixed star, but I suspect it would be extremely difficult to accomplish for any length of time. It's not as if you could just park it someplace. Then there's parallax to consider. In any event, the message wouldn't be "Build a spaceship with technology no one has ever seen before." The message would be "Get your act together or we'll bulldoze your planet to make room for a hyperspace bypass," or "Take the red pill LOL" or "Get Amazon Prime today. The bargains are out of this world!"
      - irjustin 3y ago
        > It wasn't the governments that created it, but rather the governments were duped into believing it. The Iraq war?
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y ago
    Enders game.
    - irjustin 3y ago
      But... i would trust them because.... man aliens.
- AYBABTME 3y ago
  > Said world leaders really really want these things. It's a bit much to start an entire deductive reasoning based on such a blatant assumption.
- narrator 3y ago
  What if it's much more boring and sad than that? Like we're a contained invasive species. They're peaceful, and they respect our rights to this planet cause we evolved here but they're scared of us getting off the planet and running roughshod over the rest of the galaxy which is pretty full of intelligent life and there's no final frontier to speak of. Meanwhile our government is busy trying to reverse engineer what scraps we've managed to get a hold of so we can somehow practice galactic imperialism. I call this the "crowded galaxy" resolution to the Fermi Paradox.
Ireallyapart 3y ago
>Much less commonly said, but still true, is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary trust. What you say is true. But here's the problem. 99% of people in this world are people you don't know well and don't know personally and they aren't famous enough for you to trust them. Thus by probability an extraordinary claim that is true is highly, highly likely to come from someone you will never have any form of "extraordinary" trust for. So your statement, which I quoted, is, from a practical standpoint, completely useless. By your logic all extraordinary claims in existence will all pretty much be mistrusted by you. It's a statement of complete denial of anything that sounds outlandish. It's the definition of being closed minded. Being extremely closed minded tends to be better than being extremely open minded where you believe every freaking thing you hear. But the best place to be in is at neither extreme. Rather then deny all extraordinary claims you should be skeptical. You need to search for techniques in which will help you determine whether you CAN or CANNOT trust someone you do not already have "extraordinary" trust for. To which I throw this statement at you: If someone makes a statement without any ulterior motive that results in net benefit to them, you can place more merit on the fact that they are telling you what they believe to be the truth. So take for example a stranger tells you there's a bomb in the building and you have to get out. You get the hell out because that stranger had nothing to gain from telling there's a bomb. If a person with a camera is recording you and he told you there's a bomb in the building. Well that's different right? The key difference here is that in one situation there's a clear ulterior motive. In the other situation there was no motive. Follow the motive. The person making the claim... what is his motive?
- necovek 3y ago
  > ...and they aren't famous enough for you to trust them. That's not how we gain extraordinary trust (remember, Kyrie Irving is pretty darn famous). We expect all statements to be independently verified and attested by a bunch of experts, with eg. journalists verifying they are indeed experts (that's journalists' expertise). The more people who've you learned to trust in that chain of verifiers, the higher your trust. When it comes to extraordinary claims like this, I usually go back to the "implementation": why and how did another civilization solve all of the physics problems of interstellar flight (if it did), how did they go undetected by other countries and amateurs, and why did they not simply reach out in an attempt to communicate? At that point I can even buy that these "intelligence officers" believe what they are saying, but I still don't buy that their claims are true.
AYBABTME 3y ago
> why then were you lying the up to this point then? So it'll take a lot to convince me that this is real. But let's say for an instant that it is. And you're the government, and you need to handle "announcing" this to the people without freaking them out. I guess you set the scene, monitor for a while what people do (decades of denial), then when it seems like the people are doing alright/don't care about it much, start to say you'll actually look into it (couple years ago with official release of documents). Then monitor the reaction... again people don't really care. Kind of exciting for some people for a day or two but still go work in the morning, life goes on. Then you start to drop the other shoe. I guess? I'm skeptic but if there was a world in which there are alien UAPs, where the govt knows, where the govt hides it, I can construe this scenario as a good reason why govts would have gone about it in this way.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y ago
> Because if they are real you've been lying and lying and lying and lying beyond my capacity to express in a single sentence When speaking of the us government and its agencies we must remain ever cognizant that the official story is rarely truthful whether explicitly or by omission. Relatedly, we’ve seen extraordinary measures taken against individuals leaking pretty minor and generally suspected details like wholesale warrant less surveillance via direct taps on arterial comm lines. Thus, it is more likely that this guy has nothing and no power, else he’d be in an Ecuadorian embassy/Russia or an as of yet unknown black site instead of doing interviews.

by jerf 3y ago

alehlopeh 3y ago

A credible alien threat would give world leaders a super easy excuse to demand emergency powers, impose martial law, and assume total control of all aspects of life, in the name of the war effort. Said world leaders really really want these things, so you can safely assume there isn’t a credible alien threat. You don’t have to trust them, just trust that they’ll act in their own interests and work backwards from there.

willis936 3y ago
I believe this was the plot to Watchmen.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  I don't think it was. Could be a great piece of fiction based on COVID lockdowns though.
  - Jtsummers 3y ago
    It was a key element of Watchmen. The movie changed the common enemy from aliens, but kept the general concept. It wasn't the governments that created it, but rather the governments were duped into believing it.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      Interesting problem in orbital mechanics, suitable for the Musks and Bezoses of the world: calculate parameters for satellite launch, insertion, and stationkeeping needed to simulate seemingly-irrefutable signals from an intelligent ET civilization.
      - AtlasBarfed 3y ago
        That was the coverup of Contact the movie version.
        CamperBob2 3y ago
        Potentially, but we never found out for sure. Now there are multiple private teams who could actually pull it off. Or maybe not... I have no idea how hard it would be to make a signal source appear from Earth as if it came from a fixed star, but I suspect it would be extremely difficult to accomplish for any length of time. It's not as if you could just park it someplace. Then there's parallax to consider. In any event, the message wouldn't be "Build a spaceship with technology no one has ever seen before." The message would be "Get your act together or we'll bulldoze your planet to make room for a hyperspace bypass," or "Take the red pill LOL" or "Get Amazon Prime today. The bargains are out of this world!"
    - irjustin 3y ago
      > It wasn't the governments that created it, but rather the governments were duped into believing it. The Iraq war?
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y ago
  Enders game.
  - irjustin 3y ago
    But... i would trust them because.... man aliens.
AYBABTME 3y ago
> Said world leaders really really want these things. It's a bit much to start an entire deductive reasoning based on such a blatant assumption.
narrator 3y ago
What if it's much more boring and sad than that? Like we're a contained invasive species. They're peaceful, and they respect our rights to this planet cause we evolved here but they're scared of us getting off the planet and running roughshod over the rest of the galaxy which is pretty full of intelligent life and there's no final frontier to speak of. Meanwhile our government is busy trying to reverse engineer what scraps we've managed to get a hold of so we can somehow practice galactic imperialism. I call this the "crowded galaxy" resolution to the Fermi Paradox.

Ireallyapart 3y ago

>Much less commonly said, but still true, is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary trust. What you say is true. But here's the problem. 99% of people in this world are people you don't know well and don't know personally and they aren't famous enough for you to trust them. Thus by probability an extraordinary claim that is true is highly, highly likely to come from someone you will never have any form of "extraordinary" trust for. So your statement, which I quoted, is, from a practical standpoint, completely useless. By your logic all extraordinary claims in existence will all pretty much be mistrusted by you. It's a statement of complete denial of anything that sounds outlandish. It's the definition of being closed minded. Being extremely closed minded tends to be better than being extremely open minded where you believe every freaking thing you hear. But the best place to be in is at neither extreme. Rather then deny all extraordinary claims you should be skeptical. You need to search for techniques in which will help you determine whether you CAN or CANNOT trust someone you do not already have "extraordinary" trust for. To which I throw this statement at you: If someone makes a statement without any ulterior motive that results in net benefit to them, you can place more merit on the fact that they are telling you what they believe to be the truth. So take for example a stranger tells you there's a bomb in the building and you have to get out. You get the hell out because that stranger had nothing to gain from telling there's a bomb. If a person with a camera is recording you and he told you there's a bomb in the building. Well that's different right? The key difference here is that in one situation there's a clear ulterior motive. In the other situation there was no motive. Follow the motive. The person making the claim... what is his motive?

necovek 3y ago
> ...and they aren't famous enough for you to trust them. That's not how we gain extraordinary trust (remember, Kyrie Irving is pretty darn famous). We expect all statements to be independently verified and attested by a bunch of experts, with eg. journalists verifying they are indeed experts (that's journalists' expertise). The more people who've you learned to trust in that chain of verifiers, the higher your trust. When it comes to extraordinary claims like this, I usually go back to the "implementation": why and how did another civilization solve all of the physics problems of interstellar flight (if it did), how did they go undetected by other countries and amateurs, and why did they not simply reach out in an attempt to communicate? At that point I can even buy that these "intelligence officers" believe what they are saying, but I still don't buy that their claims are true.

AYBABTME 3y ago

> why then were you lying the up to this point then? So it'll take a lot to convince me that this is real. But let's say for an instant that it is. And you're the government, and you need to handle "announcing" this to the people without freaking them out. I guess you set the scene, monitor for a while what people do (decades of denial), then when it seems like the people are doing alright/don't care about it much, start to say you'll actually look into it (couple years ago with official release of documents). Then monitor the reaction... again people don't really care. Kind of exciting for some people for a day or two but still go work in the morning, life goes on. Then you start to drop the other shoe. I guess? I'm skeptic but if there was a world in which there are alien UAPs, where the govt knows, where the govt hides it, I can construe this scenario as a good reason why govts would have gone about it in this way.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y ago

> Because if they are real you've been lying and lying and lying and lying beyond my capacity to express in a single sentence When speaking of the us government and its agencies we must remain ever cognizant that the official story is rarely truthful whether explicitly or by omission. Relatedly, we’ve seen extraordinary measures taken against individuals leaking pretty minor and generally suspected details like wholesale warrant less surveillance via direct taps on arterial comm lines. Thus, it is more likely that this guy has nothing and no power, else he’d be in an Ecuadorian embassy/Russia or an as of yet unknown black site instead of doing interviews.