aliens
About
This is a live page that will be updated as I find new information and arguments for and against recent UAP sightings being prosaic (mundane/easily expainable by existing science) in nature.
I've seen increasingly credible information coming out about UAPs (F.K.A UFOs) popping up over the past few years. Namely testimonies from former US Government/Military officials as well as videos released by the US Military. This page aims to collate all of the most credible information, but also to show the strongest arguments for and against the cause being aliens.
Yudkowsky
P/S/B: UFOs are almost certainly not aliens, and this is knowable with study and thought.
Perhaps you've heard that before. But it's not just empty words, this time; I've bet $150,000 to $1,000 against past UFO sightings being revealed within 5 years to have a worldview-shattering origin.
My model of the world confidently says no to alien UFOs: Their technology would not be such that, having arrived here across interstellar distances and then remained hidden, they'd need to fly around in large visible vehicles. It is definitely the case, given the physics we already know, that the aliens can do whatever surveillance they want using far tinier devices; eg, covalent-bond-strong, micron-sized robots, like bacteria but not with proteins held together by static cling.
Superintelligence is possible - it is just flat wrong that a human is as smart as any physical system can get - and you'd expect something crossing interstellar distances to be long since superintelligent. If they wanted to stay hidden, they'd stay hidden successfully. If aliens wanted to help Earth and not hide, humans would not be dying of cancer. If aliens didn't want to help, nor to hide, the aliens would have harvested the Solar System for matter and energy.
Alien psychology would not be such as to (per Robin Hanson) stay mysterious and uncertain yet occasionally visible, in order to maximize their status. If aliens wanted to shape our opinions and had no rules against causal impacts on us, they could literally just rewrite our brains. If they wanted to leave us alone instead, we'd apparently be alone. If aliens wanted to accomplish Hanson's exact hypothetical end of gaining status in our eyes, there'd be much better strategies than generating disreputable UFO stories.
I have enormously wide uncertainty about the distribution of true alien psychologies, or the spacefaring agencies that grow out of them. But it's uncertainty over a metric where--when we look back down at Earth and what those psychologies would mean to us--the supervast majority of probable alien intellects, would not come here across interstellar distances, quietly and hiding on arrival, and then occasionally fly around in giant visible vehicles.
I have enormously wide uncertainty over the possible range of alien technologies. But I can use current knowledge of physics and chemistry, and the advance analyses that others have done of what technological possibilities those imply, to put a lower bound under alien technology that's comfortably above "needs to use giant flying vehicles for travel or surveillance".
I don't need to know exactly what aliens are trying to do, to know that only a few and unlikely goals would imply a best possible strategy of flying around in sightable UFOs while staying otherwise hidden.
We live in a world where people saying "that can't happen" is cheap; where supposed "experts" hardly even stop to think before they flap their mouths, rejecting out of hand any possibility that feels a little weird to them. An expert opinion like that often indicates little more intelligence than GPT-4 uses to respond; or less, if you count chain-of-thought prompting and tell GPT-4 to think out loud before it states or implies an answer. Plenty of Experts and Authorities said in early 2020 that Covid wouldn't be a big deal, and those words were not mistaken so much as empty air.
So I'm communicating 'yes I really actually believe that' in a properly credible way, the way experts and authorities would do it in a saner world, by betting $150,000 to $1,000.
You can't easily do that for bets about the world ending, but you can do it for bets about UFOs - which draw on much of the same background knowledge, even.
(If I was somehow told with certainty that I would lose my bet, but not told the details, I would cry. With happiness and relief and hope. My present worldview is a grim one; anything that shatters my worldview is good news in expectation if not in certainty.)
UFOs aren't aliens. You can approximately leave that possibility out of your thinking. I've studied some of what one needs to study, to know that a bit more surely. There's vast room above human intellect and human technology, and what that implies is this: if there are hidden aliens, they're successfully hiding. Like, actually successfully, without the whole UFOs thing.
I don't promise that absolutely, of course. I'm no superintelligent alien myself, to know things like that.
But I can still communicate what I believe, in a way that hopefully comes across. Not through the speech of promising things; not by the social act of requesting you to believe, or ordering you to believe; but by the act of betting. That's what an authoritative institution charged with evaluating the possibilities and telling people not to worry about (or hope for) would do in a sane world; on Earth, of course, it falls to me instead.
...though symmetrically, /users/RatsWrongAboutUAP on the LessWrong forum sure has credibly communicated that they think UFOs are a big weird deal. So it comes down to who you trust more, I guess? And whether you believe my models about superintelligent psychology and superintelligent technology? Because if you don't trust me about that model, which forms the basis of my own betting position--if you think I'm too sure about things like that--then /users/RatsWrongAboutUAP has sent a loud signal that they think they know something important that I don't. They've made over $5,000 total in bets, not just with me.
Greg Fodor/Intraterrestrial Hypothesis
tl;dr: If special relativity holds, the world is vulnerable, and virtual reality can be made, humanity will not expand but will consolidate and virtualize their society using sensory stimulation hardware. The best non-prosaic explanation for the UFO phenomenon is that a pre-human species virtualized itself already, living in virtual reality, and lives underground.
UAP Hearing
Luis Elizondo:
Former director of AATIP an unclassified but unpublicized investigatory effort funded by the United States Government to study unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP).
"Advanced technologies not made by our government or any other government are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe... Furthermore, the US is in possession of UAP technologies as are some of our adversaries."
When asked if the government has conducted secret UAP crash retrieval programs designed to identify and reverse engineer alien craft, Elizondo confirmed: "Yes."
On recovered materials:
"The vehicles we're talking about are performing in excess of 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 g's" (in comparison to F-16s which can only handle 17-18 g-forces before structural failure).
"A small cadre within our own government involved in the UAP topic has created a culture of suppression and intimidation that I've personally been victim to, along with many of my former colleagues. This includes unwarranted criminal investigations, harassment, and efforts to destroy one's credibility."
When asked about recovered bodies: "Yes." (Confirming that the US has possession of nonhuman "bodies")
Tim Gallaudet:
Retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral and former Acting Administrator of NOAA. Served as the Navy's head oceanographer.
"The very next day, that email disappeared from my account and those of the other recipients without explanation... This lack of follow-up was very concerning to me. As the Navy's chief meteorologist at the time, I was responsible for reducing safety of flight risks. Yet it appeared to me that no one at the flag officer level was addressing the safety risk posed by UAPs."
Pilot Sightings
David Grusch:
Former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer with extensive service in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Reconnaissance Office. Decorated combat veteran.
"I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program" When asked if biologics were recovered: "As I have stated publicly already...biologics came with some of these recoveries."
When asked if they were human or non-human biologics, he responded "Nonhuman, and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program"
On when the U.S. first became aware of evidence: "Certainly, like I have discussed publicly, previously 1930's"
Commander David Fravor:
Distinguished Navy fighter pilot with 24 years of service. Former Commander of VFA-41 "Black Aces" squadron.
Regarding the Tic Tac object's capabilities: "I think it defies current material science...I think it is far beyond, actually, our material science that we currently possess"
"The performance. Absolute performance...We have nothing that can stop in midair and go the other direction nor do we have anything that can, like in our situation, come down from space, hang out for 3 hours and go back up"
Ryan Graves:
Former Navy F/A-18F pilot with combat experience in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Inherent Resolve.
Describing objects seen: "We were primarily seeing dark gray or black cubes inside of a clear sphere where the apex or tips of the cube were touching the inside of that sphere"
On reporting frequency: When asked what percentage of UAP sightings go unreported by pilots, he estimated "we are somewhere near 5 percent reporting, perhaps"