Original Lesswrong thread here.
Original tweet here:
Unlinked market with shorter timeframes here: /Joshua/when-will-we-know-that-any-past-ufo
1,000
1.00@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.
@benshindel looks like you'd have to spend at least $4k of your own money to even buy enough mana to invest that into this market at 90% (assuming you don't shift the odds much) to have a chance at being the top spot on the leaderboard. I would, on a personal level, legitimately advise against spending $4k of your own money on that, but I know you probably do not care what I think regardless.
@SteveSokolowski you could buy $4k of mana and sweepstakes tokens, play with the sweepstakes, cash them out, and keep the mana.
Does anyone know how to find out who the richest person on Manifold is?
@benshindel linked to the profit leaderboard, which is the most relevant/interesting manifold "score". But if you're curious about actual "richest", that sounds like net worth. That's not publicly tracked anywhere, but here's a rough estimate of the richest accounts on the site (I queried this a few weeks ago, but I doubt too much has changed since then):
looks like you'd have to spend at least $4k of your own money to even buy enough mana to invest that into this market at 90%
FWIW, with the return of loans, you wouldn't need to spend anywhere near that much—just keep taking that loan & dumping it back into the market. I am encouraging Manifold to add a per-market cap (by % of net worth) on loans because I don't think there's any reason for the site to offer unlimited leverage to people who chose to dump their entire account into one market. But until they make that change, under the current system, I do not think it would be terribly hard to get 6 million NO shares in this market—1.5% of your position per day really adds up.
@Ziddletwix it looks like with the way Manifold has now implemented loans, you don't get to take loans of your positions built from loans, so you can essentially only leverage by a factor of 2, I believe...? Or am I misunderstanding?
@benshindel AFAIK there is currently no cap on leverage. A bit hard to test, so not 100% confident, but I don’t think there was one before and I think this is the same system.
If you bet 1000M and you get a 15M loan, that is subtracted from the total you can receive a loan the next time. But you now have 15M in your balance and can bet it in the same market and get a loan on that as well (ie loans are deducted but they aren’t double deducted, they just offset the additional balance you’re given).
Again, haven’t checked this too carefully but I’m fairly sure. Pls LMK if you see evidence otherwise
@metacontrarian If that's the case, the government is still lying and it is still wrong. If it turned out they are terrorizing citizens of New Jersey with test drones and they weren't lame ducks, I would vote Biden out over this alone.
I don't have time to get into a lengthy explanation of why I don't find the "testing" argument compelling, but for now: it doesn't fit Occam's Razor like non-humans do, for one - it requires a lot of complex reasoning to work through holes like why the drones are appearing in many states and many other places in the world and why they were in Colorado and so on.
Most importantly, it requires explaining why the test drones didn't go away last night, which is what you would expect to happen if the White House has gotten to the point where they now need to lie about it. We are now past the point where if the US military were causing the drones, they would have stoppped doing that. We're very close to the line where the story becomes unstoppable and the truth is going to come out.
The most sensible reason for the White House to post obviously false information is that the secret is so big that it could take down the government with it.
@metacontrarian , other than Trump, can you ever recall a time when the US government has issued such blatantly false propaganda? I'm not talking about when they issued cover stories for things that nobody knew about. I'm talking about how everyone knows this statement is absolutely false, and yet they are saying it anyway, like dictators in the Middle East do.
I wouldn't ask the Navy to stop testing its drone, a simple flying device that terrorizes no one because we all know drones exist.
@metacontrarian Come on. This is ridiculous.
Drudge often has sensational headlines, but the articles do back up that there are people who are ready to take matters into their own hands.
The military isn't going to keep testing "drones" when people start saying they're going to shoot at them and possibly get their technology.
@SteveSokolowski Didn't you say somewhere here that you believe the UFOs are nonhuman AND there are human-origin UFOs that are so advanced that they meet the worldview shattering criteria of the bet? And it's like China and Russia spying on nuclear sites?
@metacontrarian I'm not sure where I said that.
There are definitely UFOs that are non-human. As to human UFOs, I take Grusch and Elizondo at their word that little or no progress has been made in the reverse engineering programs. Therefore, while possible, I find it implausible that all of a sudden Russia or China would have beaten the United States to figuring out the technology to such a degree that they not only had a prototype, but thousands of craft and were able to massively manufacture them while escaping notice.
Therefore, I favor that the "drones" are more likely to be non-human than reverse engineered.
@SteveSokolowski okay even YOU have to admit this is hilarious:
"...it doesn't fit Occam's Razor like non-humans do..."
@benshindel given things being described by residents as "medium-sized drones" spotted at night in New Jersey next to a navy facility, what would Occam's Razor suggest is true:
1) The Navy is testing drones
2) Aliens are revealing themselves to us because AGI is imminent
@benshindel No, I stand by my statement that whatever this is, US military testing is the least likely explanation.
One has to love how John Kirby just stood up in a press conference and said that there are no confirmed sightings of the drones, thus contradicting about every local government official in the entire state of New Jersey.
I guess now they're down to just hoping the biggest secret in the world somehow goes away. Perhaps there's one last gasp that the same old playbook might work again?