Strong agree. I think it's most likely our BRAINS are fucking with us. Or possibly some people behind a well-funded experimental flight project. Maybe there are reasons ($$$) why it's in states' interest to keep rumors swirling.
What if aliens have shrouded their aircraft in camouflage technology that makes them look blurry and distant? Surely if you can make a tic-tac accelerate at 700G that shouldn't be too much a stretch. Perhaps not being detectable by lesser lifeforms is Article 1 of the interstellar constitution? Time to update your priors again!
Sure, that's possible. But I doubt it because if they could do all that, surely they would also have the technology to make their aircraft completely invisible to us? So it seems like they would have to be deliberately keeping themselves *right on the boundary of detectable*—basically, they'd have to be screwing with us. I just think that's unlikely.
(Also, notice the difficulty of applying this argument to, e.g., whistleblowers that report the government has intact alien aircraft. Are aliens somehow controlling the social dynamics so that we get third-hand reports, but never first-hand reports?)
I was being slightly sarcastic ;) although now that you mention it, maybe there are billions of invisible aircraft cruising Earth at all times and we only notice the ones with failing camouflage.
More seriously, I fully agree with your thesis. All it would take is ONE SINGLE GOOD VIDEO to change every skeptics mind, but every day that passes without such evidence is a vote against aliens.
I would genuinely give higher odds for "alien aircraft are everywhere but completely invisible to us" than to "alien aircraft are detected in things like the Gimbal video".
People are terrible at keeping secrets. Probably the biggest secret ever, how to make an atomic bomb, was stolen within a couple of years of the end of world war 2. The secrets of the CIA and NSA were stolen and made public a few years ago. Most recently the secrets of the Ukraine war were published. There is no way that data about real crashed UFOs has been kept secret for many decades.
I am somewhat uncomfortable that you didn't summarize the argument by simply writing:
P[alien-related observations and non observations | aliens] ~= P[alien-related observations and non observations | No aliens], and the '~=' might well be a '<'
If I'm not mistaken, there's also a strong correlation between "developed" countries and claims of visitation. People who have to struggle to meet their daily needs don't seem to get visited by aliens very often. I don't know if a similar correlation holds for these sightings.
I pretty much agree but I'm a little uncomfortable with the part where you argue that the existence of a lot of weak evidence in favor of aliens is actually pretty strong evidence against aliens. I'm not sure you're entirely wrong but I think one has to be very careful with that sort of argument as it seems like it would be very easy to talk oneself into a false belief that way.
Strong agree. I think it's most likely our BRAINS are fucking with us. Or possibly some people behind a well-funded experimental flight project. Maybe there are reasons ($$$) why it's in states' interest to keep rumors swirling.
What if aliens have shrouded their aircraft in camouflage technology that makes them look blurry and distant? Surely if you can make a tic-tac accelerate at 700G that shouldn't be too much a stretch. Perhaps not being detectable by lesser lifeforms is Article 1 of the interstellar constitution? Time to update your priors again!
Sure, that's possible. But I doubt it because if they could do all that, surely they would also have the technology to make their aircraft completely invisible to us? So it seems like they would have to be deliberately keeping themselves *right on the boundary of detectable*—basically, they'd have to be screwing with us. I just think that's unlikely.
(Also, notice the difficulty of applying this argument to, e.g., whistleblowers that report the government has intact alien aircraft. Are aliens somehow controlling the social dynamics so that we get third-hand reports, but never first-hand reports?)
I was being slightly sarcastic ;) although now that you mention it, maybe there are billions of invisible aircraft cruising Earth at all times and we only notice the ones with failing camouflage.
More seriously, I fully agree with your thesis. All it would take is ONE SINGLE GOOD VIDEO to change every skeptics mind, but every day that passes without such evidence is a vote against aliens.
I would genuinely give higher odds for "alien aircraft are everywhere but completely invisible to us" than to "alien aircraft are detected in things like the Gimbal video".
I agree, even if I don't want to agree. Opinions are easy and math is a hard mistress. In the end that's what makes life interesting.
People are terrible at keeping secrets. Probably the biggest secret ever, how to make an atomic bomb, was stolen within a couple of years of the end of world war 2. The secrets of the CIA and NSA were stolen and made public a few years ago. Most recently the secrets of the Ukraine war were published. There is no way that data about real crashed UFOs has been kept secret for many decades.
I am somewhat uncomfortable that you didn't summarize the argument by simply writing:
P[alien-related observations and non observations | aliens] ~= P[alien-related observations and non observations | No aliens], and the '~=' might well be a '<'
If I'm not mistaken, there's also a strong correlation between "developed" countries and claims of visitation. People who have to struggle to meet their daily needs don't seem to get visited by aliens very often. I don't know if a similar correlation holds for these sightings.
I pretty much agree but I'm a little uncomfortable with the part where you argue that the existence of a lot of weak evidence in favor of aliens is actually pretty strong evidence against aliens. I'm not sure you're entirely wrong but I think one has to be very careful with that sort of argument as it seems like it would be very easy to talk oneself into a false belief that way.