I think this almost perfectly describes my problem with these videos/accounts/sensor readings. The same thing that makes them better evidence of aliens also makes them less likely to be real evidence. The crazier the physical constraints, the more likely “if this is real, the explanation is extra-terrestrial” becomes, but the less likely “it is real” becomes. Evidence that significantly increases the probability of “this is real” without significantly decreasing the probability of “if this is real, the explanation is extra-terrestrial” seems necessary yet elusive.
The discussion of UAPs lately reminds me of the “How would Magnus Carlsen beat me at chess?” example that is popular in alignment these days. The still-unexplained phenomena that people will demand explanations for must be rare and hard to explain without a lot of good observations, or they wouldn’t still be unexplained.
It seems similar to assuming that dark matter must be far more mysterious than just a particle, because we have so much trouble confirming any explanation of it, despite the fact that its observed behavior tells us that it should be extremely hard to confirm for any methods available to us.
I think the fact that the accelerations are close to, but not, a complete violation of physics is the most interesting, but it depends on how likely you think it is that a non-extraterrestrial explanation for a rare phenomena would also not seem to violate those laws. Or how likely a non-extraterrestrial explanation might be to appear to violate the laws of physics before further investigation. I do think this actually would make me update a bit in favor of extra-terrestrials if I thought about it more.
I wish my thoughts on this were better formulated, but I’ve been avoidant of UAP stuff for a while because engaging with it usually left me very frustrated and annoyed, and I don’t think it’s something we are likely to make meaningful progress on.
I think this almost perfectly describes my problem with these videos/accounts/sensor readings. The same thing that makes them better evidence of aliens also makes them less likely to be real evidence. The crazier the physical constraints, the more likely “if this is real, the explanation is extra-terrestrial” becomes, but the less likely “it is real” becomes. Evidence that significantly increases the probability of “this is real” without significantly decreasing the probability of “if this is real, the explanation is extra-terrestrial” seems necessary yet elusive.
The discussion of UAPs lately reminds me of the “How would Magnus Carlsen beat me at chess?” example that is popular in alignment these days. The still-unexplained phenomena that people will demand explanations for must be rare and hard to explain without a lot of good observations, or they wouldn’t still be unexplained.
It seems similar to assuming that dark matter must be far more mysterious than just a particle, because we have so much trouble confirming any explanation of it, despite the fact that its observed behavior tells us that it should be extremely hard to confirm for any methods available to us.
I think the fact that the accelerations are close to, but not, a complete violation of physics is the most interesting, but it depends on how likely you think it is that a non-extraterrestrial explanation for a rare phenomena would also not seem to violate those laws. Or how likely a non-extraterrestrial explanation might be to appear to violate the laws of physics before further investigation. I do think this actually would make me update a bit in favor of extra-terrestrials if I thought about it more.
I wish my thoughts on this were better formulated, but I’ve been avoidant of UAP stuff for a while because engaging with it usually left me very frustrated and annoyed, and I don’t think it’s something we are likely to make meaningful progress on.