My prior on Aliens existing is essentially 0, maybe 10^-20.

Too many people are greatly underestimating the fact that life on earth is essentially a coincidence that depends on likely thousands (if not millions) of factors due to confirmation/survivorship bias.

Life isn’t a "goal of the universe" it's basically a happy accident.

Believing in aliens is probably the transhumanist (not sure if that's the correct term) equivalent to religion since there's never any evidence and there never will be but the blind faith in "not being alone" is everlasting.

@ChinmayTheMathGuy the anthropic principle is probably the least convincing argument against UFOs I can imagine, lol

Why would US being alive lead you to LOWER your estimate on alien life, haahhaha

@ChinmayTheMathGuy my prior on "UFOs" existing is essentially 0, maybe 10^-5 or so. If your prior against ANY aliens existing in the UNIVERSE is 10^-20, you're just bad at probability

@benshindel especially since the universe is believed to be literally infinite in size, the probability of them existing somewhere is approximately 100%

It's just that due to the Great Filter, Dark Forest, and Grabby Aliens hypotheses they're all currently either stuck in the precambrian, wiped themselves out, hiding terrified of each others' superweapons, or too far away to be noticeable yet

Turns out the “orb” was Venus @SteveSokolowski lol

https://x.com/mcccanm/status/1868345469199675840?s=46&t=62uT9IruD1-YP-SHFkVEPg

@benshindel Which one? There's about ten videos of orbs now.

@SteveSokolowski

@SteveSokolowski can you share some links of ones you believe are genuine?

@TheAllMemeingEye No, you can go search for them though; they're simple to find. There are about 15 now, I think. I've stopped evaluating the provenance of the newer ones because I have been focused on the complaint I need to finish and file.

@TheAllMemeingEye
I don't know if these are genuine or not, but they don't look like planes
https://x.com/AvirupM42/status/1868252146023760027
https://x.com/Gandalf_ElPulpo/status/1868418573942800588

@Bair the second one is so bad quality it could literally be anything, but the first one is pretty interesting

The Internet is not necessarily a reflection of the real world, but it's interesting to follow reddit.

If you ignore the subreddits that cover UFOs explicitly, and just look at places that discuss local issues, there has been a noticible shift just over the past two days. In /r/NJDrones, for example, two days ago they banned discussion of UFOs as a "conspiracy theory."

But now pretty much every post in that subreddit today has settled on non-humans being the cause of the "drones." Many of them are now discussing it as fact, and are talking about the implications of it on other topics, rather than just theorizing that the drones could be non-human. The "nuclear search" theory is still talked about but seems to be fading fast, as it never aligned with the timing and lack of ground presence.

I'm also curious: is there anyone here who actually lives in New Jersey and is still betting YES? If so, I'm curious to hear why. My belief is that if people who seriously researched non-human intelligence hadn't been demeaned for 80 years, this market would now be a coin flip.

@SteveSokolowski you’re only a few hours away; go catch one, you rascal. Become a true legend.

@LiamZ yeah if I held the genuine belief that non dangerous aliens were visible on earth and they were only a couple hours away I'd definitely try to see them myself

Someone should redo this market for 2025 (and maybe include a clause that it resolves N/A if current loan rules change). I'd do it myself, but I want to bet a lot on YES.

It can start in January so the current drone situation doesn't affect it (presumably it should be over by then).

New market: /SteveSokolowski/will-nonhuman-intelligence-become-a

Another new market: /SteveSokolowski/will-a-disaster-occur-related-to-th

This new market is different than the current one: it only requires that the possibility starts to be seriously considered by normal people.

@SteveSokolowski a couple questions:

• Do you agree with the basic principles behind the two-factor version of Occam's razor as described here? i.e. computationally simple explanation and high correlation with observation https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/f4txACqDWithRi7hs/occam-s-razor

• If so, could you give a concise explanation for how you feel UFO sightings being actual extraterrestrials fits this better than people misidentifying regular earth aircraft/drones? i.e. if there were extraterrestrials here wouldn't it be super unlikely they'd do this rather than harvest the sun, successfully hide, establish benevolent dictatorship etc?

@TheAllMemeingEye I think you might be misunderstanding my argument below.

My assumption is the following, which is true of almost all UFO sightings: while only 2% of the incidents are hoaxes in research papers, hoaxes and misidentifications are intentionally sensationally multiplied, and they flood the media coverage. The ordinary person who sees UFOs is typically afraid of being labeled as insane and is silent or doesn't publicize his tale. Meanwhile, dishonest people don't really care about double-checking it isn't a plane and just post immediately. Therefore, as we would expect, most of the photos of this latest are not UFOs even though there actually is something massive occurring. If you don't accept that there actually are "drones," then my argument fails.

The argument itself is that given the assumption that something is actually going on, which I'm very certain about because the government has at least admitted that, then the facts are clear: there are a huge number of drones, with advanced propulsion methods, and they are worldwide. There are also other independent facts supporting non-humans, but they aren't relevant to this discussion.

Those three statements alone are sufficient to make it unlikely that humans are responsible - because even if a technological breakthrough has occurred, there has not been any indication of the physical manufacturing required to execute this operation on a worldwide scale. I could agree that a prototype of a new drone technology might have been discovered, but it is improbable that anyone could manufacture so many without massive factories and mining infrastructure.

@TheAllMemeingEye By the way, I find it interesting that Yudkowsky himself has not provided any public comment on the present situation. Do you know why? I want to hear his explanation, even if he defends his bet.

@SteveSokolowski What's your source on the 2% stat? If I understand correctly that it's saying orchestrated intentional hoaxes are rare, that doesn't seem like evidence that the remaining 98% aren't all misidentification rather than real sightings.

You make the reasonable point that if extraterrestrials were really flying around in the evening in visible slow craft, we would likely see the current phenomena of regular people underreporting real sightings and crazier people overreporting both real and misidentified sightings, and the government trying to cover it up, thus it scores marginally better on the second Occam's razor factor given that premise.

However, what I'm getting at is that said premise of extraterrestrials flying around in the evening in visible slow craft itself fails at the second Occam's razor factor given the broader premise of extraterrestrials being here at all, because they would almost certainly have different goals resulting in either total visibility or total invisibility.

What do you mean by the government admitting that "something is going on"? That could mean anything lol, much more likely secret military stuff than aliens. Moreover it's not surprising that given the premise of secret military stuff happening that the R&D and manufacturing wouldn't be public knowledge, right? Would you have known about the Manhattan project before they declassified it?

@TheAllMemeingEye After thinking about the evidence more closely, and looking at more videos that aren't obviously fabricated, I think the evidence is converging on a hybrid theory:

1. There are indeed drones, but these drones were created by the US military (explaining the early evening timing, lack of urgency (i.e off on Thanksgiving, no ground presence), reassurances there is no danger, deflection, etc).

2. There are also UFOs, in the form of the typical spheres, and the drones' purpose is to investigate them because they don't know much about them and had no capability to do so until now.

The newly-developed drones are drawing attention to the spheres/orbs when they investigate them but the drones themselves operate like human vehicles running on a breakthrough technology.

The biggest remaining question with this theory is the combination of an obvious lack of urgency and officials' behavior that indicates no danger, with the large sudden widespread deployment. Perhaps there hasn't actually been an increase in UFO activity; they just decided they need to start the investigation at some point and decided to do it now.

@SteveSokolowski https://polymarket.com/event/are-the-new-jersey-mystery-drones-aliens seems like you should be betting money here if these are your true beliefs

@benshindel I'm all out. I need my remaining mana to manage and create markets at the end of the month.

@SteveSokolowski I don't think you need mana to bet on polymarket, just regular money you can convert into USD coin, though understandably you might be hesitant given your history with crypto

Back to the previous point, you have put forward a slightly more realistic hypothesis, but the presence of semi visible aliens at all in it means it still falls to my arguments, do you have a counterargument?