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There are long tails in the distribution of the universe. I'm not sure where UAP fall in, but this thought exercise from Sagan helps to characterize my skeptici
by tomrod 3y ago
There are long tails in the distribution of the universe. I'm not sure where UAP fall in, but this thought exercise from Sagan helps to characterize my skepticism: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage
- klabb3 3y agoI don’t pay much attention to the current shenanigans, but bone-headed rationalism has way too much opinions about black swan type of events. There’s never enough data to use reason in the way they think. A low expected value with high uncertainty isn’t a place to swing empiricism around like a sledgehammer. > There are long tails in the distribution of the universe. This is exactly the issue. There are no such “tails” on 0 data. Empiricism is a powerful tool, but it’s not universal.
- tomrod 3y agoI approach the tails as being open to it (a null hypothesis) until data and experimentation can reject -- within reason, as snake oil sales happen.