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> It's amazing how quickly they explain away seemingly credible testimony from a real intelligence officer. Really depends on what your priors are. For almost

> It's amazing how quickly they explain away seemingly credible testimony from a real intelligence officer. Really depends on what your priors are. For almost everyone, the existence of aliens has a much, much lower probability than the probability of someone lying about it or being mistaken about it. As a sanity check, imagine a person with a similar background testified to congress that elves are real and have been kidnapping children and replacing them with changelings. How would you rate the relative probabilities of that being the truth or him being a liar or mistaken? This isn't really arbitrary -- there are plenty of people in the world who deeply believe in the existence of elves and little people.

david-gpu 3y ago
When you refuse rigorous research to be conducted in a subject, you can't act surprised when the existing evidence is lacking in rigor. Your priors are that it is unlikely to be true, and I respect that. My priors on the existence of dark matter WIMPS is also fairly low yet I don't dismiss people who are trying to find them.
- empath-nirvana 3y ago
  > When you refuse rigorous research to be conducted in a subject, you can't act surprised when the existing evidence is lacking in rigor. Alien fans say stuff like this all the time, but where is the evidence that rigorous research on this is being blocked? We spent like a billion dollars on SETI. There are volumes and volumes of actual science looking for extraterrestrial life. _It's not out there_. It's not like the skepticism about aliens is based on a refusal to look at the evidence. If aliens were real and they were visiting earth, you'd expect all of the instruments we have scanning outer space constantly would find _some_ evidence of ships or communication or life or _anything_. There is _nothing_. People don't take the supposed evidence of UFOs seriously because in the context of _everything else we know about outer space_, it's extraordinarily unlikely that our _only_ evidence of extraterrestrial life would be some grainy video of a lozenge shape object taken from an airplane. (which isn't to say that there's no life anywhere else in the universe, maybe some level of microbial life is common, I don't know, but if there were civilizations capable of interstellar travel, it would be a lot more obvious) Any scientist would dearly love to find any extraterrestrial life. It would be world fame and an instant nobel prize. It'd be one of the most important discoveries in the history of mankind. The idea that scientists aren't looking for alien life is just silly.
  - david-gpu 3y ago
    > Alien fans say stuff like this all the time, but where is the evidence that rigorous research on this is being blocked? Did I say that it is being blocked? I am saying that it is not being done. The SETI leadership is actively hostile to searching for UAPs in our vicinity like Avi Loeb is trying to do now. And this is no unique to SETI but rather it is a widespread stigma that affects academia in general. > The idea that scientists aren't looking for alien life is just silly. How many scientists can you name that are looking for signs of technologically advanced non-human craft in our atmosphere? How many grants are there to research this? Because I only know of one (Avi Loeb) and he was only able to start doing this sometime last year against massive opposition and stigma from his colleagues.
    - empath-nirvana 3y ago
      > How many scientists can you name that are looking for signs of technologically advanced non-human craft in our atmosphere? The US government and, indeed, almost every government on earth, scans our atmosphere constantly for alien craft both from earth and using satellites (which is to say, they're looking for missiles and bombers) because it's sort of a core function of national security to control your own airspace. I'm not sure you need anything extra to find "non-human" spacecraft.
      - david-gpu 3y ago
        > The US government and, indeed, almost every government on earth, scans our atmosphere constantly for alien craft both from earth and using satellites (which is to say, they're looking for missiles and bombers) because it's sort of a core function of national security to control your own airspace. I'm not sure you need anything extra to find "non-human" spacecraft. And do they systematically release that data for academic researchers to analyze? Or is it automatically classified? If it is classified (hint:it is) then how do we know what they have found? If you were part of the military brass and your mission was thus the defense of your nation, what would you do if you received radar reports of objects behaving unlike anything else that your known technology could do? And if upon further research your experts determined beyond reasonable doubt that these anomalies are real craft, what would you do? Remember that your mission is to provide every possible military advantage to your country and to prevent other countries from gaining an advantage agsinst you. Me? I would try to shoot them down to study them and keep the lid on the whole thing to prevent our adversaries from leapfrogging our current technology.

david-gpu 3y ago

When you refuse rigorous research to be conducted in a subject, you can't act surprised when the existing evidence is lacking in rigor. Your priors are that it is unlikely to be true, and I respect that. My priors on the existence of dark matter WIMPS is also fairly low yet I don't dismiss people who are trying to find them.

empath-nirvana 3y ago
> When you refuse rigorous research to be conducted in a subject, you can't act surprised when the existing evidence is lacking in rigor. Alien fans say stuff like this all the time, but where is the evidence that rigorous research on this is being blocked? We spent like a billion dollars on SETI. There are volumes and volumes of actual science looking for extraterrestrial life. _It's not out there_. It's not like the skepticism about aliens is based on a refusal to look at the evidence. If aliens were real and they were visiting earth, you'd expect all of the instruments we have scanning outer space constantly would find _some_ evidence of ships or communication or life or _anything_. There is _nothing_. People don't take the supposed evidence of UFOs seriously because in the context of _everything else we know about outer space_, it's extraordinarily unlikely that our _only_ evidence of extraterrestrial life would be some grainy video of a lozenge shape object taken from an airplane. (which isn't to say that there's no life anywhere else in the universe, maybe some level of microbial life is common, I don't know, but if there were civilizations capable of interstellar travel, it would be a lot more obvious) Any scientist would dearly love to find any extraterrestrial life. It would be world fame and an instant nobel prize. It'd be one of the most important discoveries in the history of mankind. The idea that scientists aren't looking for alien life is just silly.
- david-gpu 3y ago
  > Alien fans say stuff like this all the time, but where is the evidence that rigorous research on this is being blocked? Did I say that it is being blocked? I am saying that it is not being done. The SETI leadership is actively hostile to searching for UAPs in our vicinity like Avi Loeb is trying to do now. And this is no unique to SETI but rather it is a widespread stigma that affects academia in general. > The idea that scientists aren't looking for alien life is just silly. How many scientists can you name that are looking for signs of technologically advanced non-human craft in our atmosphere? How many grants are there to research this? Because I only know of one (Avi Loeb) and he was only able to start doing this sometime last year against massive opposition and stigma from his colleagues.
  - empath-nirvana 3y ago
    > How many scientists can you name that are looking for signs of technologically advanced non-human craft in our atmosphere? The US government and, indeed, almost every government on earth, scans our atmosphere constantly for alien craft both from earth and using satellites (which is to say, they're looking for missiles and bombers) because it's sort of a core function of national security to control your own airspace. I'm not sure you need anything extra to find "non-human" spacecraft.
    - david-gpu 3y ago
      > The US government and, indeed, almost every government on earth, scans our atmosphere constantly for alien craft both from earth and using satellites (which is to say, they're looking for missiles and bombers) because it's sort of a core function of national security to control your own airspace. I'm not sure you need anything extra to find "non-human" spacecraft. And do they systematically release that data for academic researchers to analyze? Or is it automatically classified? If it is classified (hint:it is) then how do we know what they have found? If you were part of the military brass and your mission was thus the defense of your nation, what would you do if you received radar reports of objects behaving unlike anything else that your known technology could do? And if upon further research your experts determined beyond reasonable doubt that these anomalies are real craft, what would you do? Remember that your mission is to provide every possible military advantage to your country and to prevent other countries from gaining an advantage agsinst you. Me? I would try to shoot them down to study them and keep the lid on the whole thing to prevent our adversaries from leapfrogging our current technology.