What’s the middle of “something definitely exists” and “nothing exists”?

Seems like it would err on the side of “maybe something exists” which doesn’t quite feel like a middle ground.

Replace UFOs with Sasquatch.

“Sasquatch exists and here is the picture and Sasquatch tracks to prove it!”

“You made that up. It’s a guy in a costume. Why can’t we find any single dead Sasquatch? Why are all the pictures and videos crappy?”

“Why can’t you meet me in the middle and at least admit it’s possible that Sasquatch exists??”

Personally I’m open-minded and find the topic of aliens quite interesting. But there isn’t a single ounce of convincing evidence and it would require a gigantic coverup with tons of complicit actors. There needs to be extraordinary evidence before anyone needs to agree to meet anywhere in the middle. Until then we should default toward it not existing. In other words, your null hypothesis is that it doesn’t exist. So far the evidence has failed to cause someone to reject that hypothesis.

A reasonable take would be asking “why are there stories of a giant bipedal ape told around the world by different cultures?” Could they be based on actual creatures like Gigantopithecus whose existence may have been recorded in oral histories for thousands of years? It doesn’t have to mean maybe they exist now but it can serve as a good motivation to do anthropological and archeological research.

Totally agree. I don't want to be the guy who's trying to have the last word and comment on everything here. I guess I just want to engage on this topic where I feel like I got so much to say. I'm sure there are other people here have more to say than me, I hope to try to create a sort of welcoming environment for those people come and engage too by removing or stopping some of the incorrect negativity and dismissals that I see around this topic.

I think we should all be engaging in this topic critically and openly. With curiosity rather than certainty, when none exists. I think we should not be so casual or strident in just dismissing or discounting other human beings personal experiences. Especially when there are so many people with stories. These humans are valuable, and their stories are valuable. We shouldn't dismiss that, or disrespect them. But also, in aggregate, with other evidence, we should consider it and be curious. Not rush to conclusion either way. Be wary of the theorists and commentariat, but be curious about it. I think you see this, that's what you're saying too, I think. Except the "default toward not existing" is the crazy thing. You should just default toward "not understanding". To me, being sure that it's whatever your theory is, and being sure that it's all just fabricated, are both equally wrong. Just calmly face the evidence, think about it if it interests you, don't rush to opine.

I never really understood this line of argument. It’s possible to engage with something openly, yet reach a conclusion about what the available evidence says about factual circumstances. Interpreting someone’s account of an experience differently than they do themselves does not mean they didn’t have the experience, or that you are dismissing them.

For example, I’m an atheist, but I don’t doubt that many people frequently have religious experiences. I just think that there are more likely explanations of those experiences than that they are caused by a god. I still find religion and accounts of religious experiences fascinating, and I very much respect that it’s a fundamental part of many people’s lives.

Having an opinion doesn’t mean you dismiss everyone who has a different opinion.

No way. Modern research has demonstrated how unstructured and unscientific our reasoning is, easy to fool and game, falling prey to a plethora of biases. If anything, rejecting your own and other people's personal experience should be the default, because the information we gather when not taking the utmost care to calibrate our instruments is pretty much garbage. A quick example of this would be how unreliable eyewitness testimony is in trials, but of course the sightings of various unproven phenomena(sasquatch, loch ness monster, etc) are also a great example of our "personal experience" being put to the test and found to be useless.

To me, it's more plausible to believe that the world we "experience" practically does not exist, and our memories and perceptions very rarely match reality, than to concede that these particular collective personal experiences amount to evidence of anything.

no offense but I think you're unfairly and inconsistently dialing down your personal reliability for your subjective experience in this topic because this topic has the implications and emotional and psychological baggage that it does but you would be much more likely to trust yourself in your everyday life with the things that you already know. And I think that's reasonable. if I had some experience where there was a UFO or aliens I would definitely be doubting myself. But I think given time, or given repeated experiences, or given other people who had similar experiences and if I reflected on it I could definitely come to trust that what I experienced was true. Maybe that makes me unreliable... I mean I am unreliable my memory is unreliable my logic is unreliable my interpretations are unreliable my senses are unreliable. But I still have to piece together an existence just like everyone does. Just like I think you'd believe the things that happened to you in your everyday life. and I don't think we can discount other people's experiences so easily. Particularly if yeah so many experiences. Even if you have an unreliable sensor or sparse signals you can reconstruct an accurate picture, particularly if you have enough sensors. I'm not saying that all of the people's experiences means that it must be aliens I'm just saying it means that something is happening and I don't think it's honest for people to judge that as oh well this just means these people are unreliable. If that's true then it's just as equally likely that your judgment of them is unreliable too. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Theory and Observation in Science: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/science-theory-observatio...

Convincing is your value judgment for you. And that's fair enough but just because you don't find it convincing doesn't mean we as in everybody should default towards not believing. Or discounting that it's possible. to me the large number of people who have personal experience is extraordinary evidence. I think that definitely means something's happening but I don't know what that something is.

keeping the middle ground is just remaining open-minded. Not discounting any possibility. I think that logical argument you make is a trap and I don't really understand it. Why assume non-existence is a default position. It seems kind of stupid and arrogant that because God hasn't come down and shown you something personally because he hasn't personally convinced you then the smartest thing for you to do is to believe that it just simply can't exist. No offense and you're not the only one who thinks like this but I just think that's kind of stupid and arrogant. I don't think you're stupid I think you're a very smart person but I don't understand why people think that default not existence position is smart. I mean to put it in an engineering point of view just because you haven't seen a bridge failure or just because your software hasnt experienced a particular failure mode yet is not a smart reason for you to believe that it's impossible. I'm sure without an eye blink within one heartbeat you would accept that statement so I don't get why you contract away from this notion as applied to other areas particularly areas where we have no fucking clue what's going on. No offense

my feeling in general is that people contract away from that because the implications emotionally psychologically are too scary. But I don't think that subjective emotional reaction to a possible implication should guide the primary response. maybe I'm making too much of it maybe it doesn't matter but I just think it's an important topic it's an important question. I don't think whether it's decided one way or another I don't think that will have all the answers for us as a species I just think it's interesting and it would be interesting to know.

Being uncertain is in the middle. It's a position that too few humans are willing to take on any issue, treating it as if it were madness. If you are uncertain your options are to either ignore the issue or explore all the options.

That’s the point though, isn’t it? Many people have devoted their entire lives to “exploring the options” and still come up with basically nothing.

No, that's not the point. That what your think, and i think, it's a little harsh and dismissive for you to judge someone else's life work or experience or what they amount to and say they've achieved nothing. I bet a lot of other actual human beings would reject your characterization of them. I think you should think of that and I think not enough people remember the human in this topic. And I think that's selfish and cruel

To be fair though, that can also be said about a lot of actual historical discoveries and scientific breakthroughs.

I’m much more willing to accept this corollary with Aliens than Bigfoot. Two very different topics.

Yeah there aren’t three fixed points of either disbelief, true middle ground, or belief. It’s a spectrum and I fall more towards the disbelief point in this case, but that doesn’t stop me from critically evaluating the possibility that I’m on the wrong end of the spectrum

That's all I'm asking. Good on you and I think it's courageous to do that in a topic where there's so much stigma

> What I don't get is the arrogance of every side about this subject. We have no answers. We have no understanding. The government seems to be about to admit as much. But the true believers are sure, and the true debunkers, yourself included, are sure. To me, you're both just tin foil hat flunkies clinging to your own special precious version of the coming apocalypse. Your own special cult.

Generally speaking, it seems like good epistemology to withhold belief in propositions until evidence exists to support them. There aren't "two equally unreasonable cults" on the issue; it's unreasonable to believe in aliens absent evidence and it is reasonable to be skeptical of the former group's claims.

I want to add that I think we should make a clear distinction between (1) “believing” in aliens and (2) believing aliens have visited us.

I am for instance virtually certain that life in general and intelligent life in particular abounds in the Universe. I am even more certain that any accounts people tell and have told of alien sightings are lies or misunderstandings.

How many thousands of people would have to agree on a sighting (that you were not a part of) for you to consider?

Not so many if any of them were working at any of the many companies and institutions that would detected such a thing and had measurements to support it.

A 100 years ago if a few thousand people all swore they saw a flying saucer over Stonehenge it would be rather convincing. Nowadays, such a sighting is impossible to witnesses without the object also being caught on any number of detectors around the globe, so if they don’t support the eyewitnesses I’m inclined to believe the sensors.

But I suspect you've convinced yourself with explanations that the sensors of the Navy around those released UAP videos were somehow invalid, or the many, if you search, nightvision UFO video, are also invalid. it would be cool if humans really had silent anti-gravity triangles, and if people see those or have an experience with them I think it's wrong to say well given that one of the possibly interpretations is aliens therefore this evidence must be discounted in these people must be crazy. I'm not saying you're saying that but I think there's definitely an incorrect trend in that direction

Something interesting about this stuff is that there's not perfect cover across all sensors always. Maybe sometimes you have people seeing something that's not on radar. Or you have something that's on radar but not on other types of sensor. Or you have something that's in the infrared but not in the visible. I'm not asking you to believe anyone interpretation just to be open and consistent I think that if you're willing to believe the sensors are malfunctioning and creating ghost tracks it's also reasonable to consider that the sensors are not capable of picking up some sorts of technology. I understand that depending on your pliers there's different takes have different probabilities to you but I don't think it's okay to rush to certainty and discount any of those interpretations and say that anyone who suggests as much or obvious for those is out and out crazy. that's offensive and abusive to people and not I think in the spirit of investigation and curiosity.

I never said people are crazy.

And I don’t know about the examples you mentioned because I haven’t looked into it.

My point is basically that explaining an anomaly by “visiting aliens” is quite a leap of faith.

I also highly doubt that a credible sighting would not be picked up by the general scientific public.

So given the immense vastness of space and the resulting difficulties in colonising it, I remain unconvinced.

That's good to know, because I find that abusive, and disrespectful to people who are just trying to discuss things. But people on the "believer" side are no better. I'm sorry to seem to falsely accuse you of that, I really wasn't. I'm just sort of waxing in all directions to share my views, taking as a starting point the inspiration from people's comments here. It needed to be said, anyway :P ;) xx

I agree with you that it's a leap of faith. I'm not asking you to make that leap. Seems you have an open mind. All I'm saying is all these experiencer testimonies I think means something is happening.

I'm not sure if by picked up you mean "detected in their telescopes" or "the story picked up and discussed". Case 1 is I think unlikely unless there were sightings everywhere at once. But there have been multiple things seen in the sky over a number of places, like Mexico City, Phoenix, Belgium, etc, that got lots of press, and have videos and hundreds of witnesses. Case 2 I think is a result of stigma. For the same reason that, even tho > 50% of people believe in aliens and psychic abilities, you are not allowed to research into those things, and if you do, people will call you crazy. It's changing a bit now...but

I agree with you on the vastness making it difficult. But I think it's arrogant to say, "Well, it looks difficult. Nah, can't be done." because that assumes that other civilizations would be unlikely to achieve more than us. I think the vastness of space and time, and our civilization's minuteness, is its own counter example to that take. It permits an alternate take which suggests there has to be somebody else out there, and they had plenty of time to do stuff.

In terms of why there's no "open contact" I like to fall back on the Star Trek Prime Directive.

By picked up I meant your Case 2. But I don't believe people are afraid of stigma. I think people in general are very curious about and interested in these kind of news. Think about the Oumuamua coverage. It was a strange thing that had no clear explanation and a remote but exciting possibility that it was an alien ship.

That went all over the world and credible/authoritative people commented on it and the possibility. Of course with all the appropriate caveats and scepticism, but the discussion was had.

About the capabilities of other civilizations, I of course concede there are almost certainly many out there with vastly greater capabilities than us. But space is just so stupidly large. Also what is the chance that aliens happen to make contact just as we as a species started to realise there was more out there than us?

Why isn't there already an alien colony here that was established a 100 million years ago?

That's actually the plot in a sci-fi I'm reading these days so there's that... In addition to the Prime Directive there is also the Dark Forest theory explaining no contact, I quite enjoyed Ken Liu's Three Body Problem trilogy.

I am very excited by our near-term (next 200 years or so) possibilities to colonize the solar system. Rather disappointed I won't get to see it happen barring some major life prologing therapies in the next decades.

I would agree with you if I accepted your framing of this. I think the framing is too narrow and doesn't do justice to the issue but within this frame your logical argument definitely makes sense.

I'm sure you may object that your frame is simply a semantically equivalent restating of what I was saying. So I would counter that that's simply your interpretation.

by the way I love your phrasing two equally unreasonable cults that's exactly what I think. the reason I think your framing is wrong is because there's not an equivalence, which I think you are assuming, between people's individual experience and people without that experience. So I'm not asking you to be a member of either of those unreasonable cults I'm not asking you to believe in aliens and I'm not asking you to believe that experiences fabricate their stories. I'm just asking you not to discount people's experiences and upon hearing those to keep an open mind.

I thought the reasonable approach was to believe in aliens (not here per se) due to the law of large numbers.

Yeah it's funny that we don't even have an agreement as to what the logical reasonable stance on this topic is. I think that's maybe an indication of how far out this topic is in terms of how far away it is from our human faculty of logic and understanding to be able to make sense of it. That alone I think is reason enough to just basically distrust a lot of things about this and keep an open mind.

> It's possible that your bias against believing this means your interpretation is a lot of bizarre takes dressed up as the only possible conclusions.

Robin presented an argument dependent on a false syllogism: if people were lying about aliens then either (Ca) they were spontaneously coming up with the same hoax or (Cb) there was some organization coordinating the hoaxes

I pointed out this syllogism missed the most obvious, commonly argued and evidentially supported alternative explanation for lots of humans telling the same story or fabricating the same evidence - humans copy each other and adapt popular stories, as they have been doing for thousands of years. That's neither spontaneous, decentralized and unlikely nor a conspiracy: it's the essence of shared knowledge and mythology. Regardless of whether I'm biased against Robin's explanation or not, he simply overlooked this in what was supposed to be his list of only possible conclusions

At no point did I discount other possibilities (I mean, I don't think fairies, angels or "greys" are likely but my argument didn't touch on that branch of the argument). I simply pointed out Robin's enthusiasm for a couple of fantastic explanations (government conspiracies to fake aliens, or actual aliens) lead him to string together a chain of reasoning which altogether neglected one of the most mundane. Which is pretty ironic, given that trying to avoid that kind of bias is literally his specialist subject!

> More specifically, in your case, you have an actual mirror case of crank-iness: you have a conspiracy for the creation of all the evidence, rather than a conspiracy for the suppression of it.

No, I specifically attack Robin's suggestion that a conspiracy for the creation of all the evidence is likely [if the evidence isn't true]. You're welcome to argue that my "humans intentionally and unintentionally copy each others' stories" hypothesis is completely wrong or vanishingly unlikely, of course, but that's a stronger knowledge claim than I made.

Perhaps you should heed your own words about leaping logic to arrive directly at certainty...

I'm sorry, but if you're going to lecture people on nuance and not being arrogant after calling them tinfoil hat flunkies, you probably should read the arguments you're commenting on first (including Robin's). Makes meeting in the middle that bit easier (I really don't have any strong opinions either way on what individual reports did or didn't see) :D

No no you're right, we should all do better myself included. I shouldn't have called you a tin foil hat wearing flunky. The other side does that and I don't agree with that. I'm sorry I take that back.

I guess my point was there's a parallel between theorizing that it has to be aliens in theorizing that it has to be fabrication that I see is equally crazy.

I like your point about people mimicking each other. I hadn't thought about that and I do think it's a definite possibility. I guess as I've said elsewhere I simply have too much faith in people to believe there are so many morally corrupt people who fabricate this kind of stuff for some sort of attention or money or fame.

I reached a different conclusion to you and it's normal that will have different views on this topic because it's a big complex topic and none of us have any idea what it's about.

I was pretty harsh to you so I'm sorry. It's no excuse but I guess I feel hurt and angry about what I see as the normalization of abuse of people bold enough to share their stories and say maybe there's something we don't understand is going on. On closer reading of what you said and on your subsequent explanation where I think you did a much better job of explaining your points (I don't think you explained it at all clearly in the first one but you definitely explained it in the follow-up) I see that you weren't saying that. You're just critiquing Robin's particular logic. But I sensed that you delivered it with that kind of contempt for this topic that I see as so corrosive and hurtful, and I hoped to push you away from that into a more reflective and more open and respectful stance towards this topic, And the people brave enough to say what they think about it. Clearly I didn't go about that in the right way. I'm sorry please forgive me, ...but ... i do have more "lecturing" to give you ;) ;p xx if you're up for that

Alright here's my more "lecturing":

I read them so you shouldn't assume that i didn't and that's in the rules but apart from that it's arrogant and narrow minded because if you're assuming the only reason I disagree with you is because I didn't read what you read then your implicit assumption is that you are absolutely right because if I had read what you'd read I would have reached the same conclusion as you. it's very disrespectful to other viewpoints and so I think if you're going to lecture people on logic and implications then you do well to sharpen your own. Logic without perspective is blind and useless, it's like knowing how to drive the car but not knowing where you're going.

I wasn't lecturing you...as "lecturing" in that usage implies there was angry criticizing, I wasn't angry. But if you feel like it's lecturing and you're feeling resistance to that I guess that might be part of your problem because you're assuming that I don't have anything that I could teach you. So I'm not lecturing I'm teaching you. You taught me About the idea that people copying each other. I'd never thought of that but it's a good point.

So if you're assuming that I have nothing to teach you it's going to be hard for you to be willing to hear what I'm saying and if you're not going to be willing to hear what I'm saying you're probably going to be assuming that you're totally right and you have nothing to learn. So it's not going to be very useful for you for me to continue to talk now is it? That's got nothing to do with me of course that's just where you're at. So before you blame me for how you took what I was saying maybe you could consider how your reaction is getting in the way of you learning something here.

So I think that validates the point that you assume that I didn't read the things that you read, because I had a different view to you. Tho doesn't it seem normal that different people are going to arrive at different views even if they read or look at the same thing? And isn't that kind of diversity of viewpoints something that you're okay with?

See I think it's very arrogant and narrow minded apart from being in the rules, to not assume that people are not reading, the implication being that there's only one truth, one possible conclusion and you're in possession of it. so clearly I think this demonstrates that you're not willing to hear on this topic right now as I said before. I don't blame you specifically I think it's something about this topic that triggers people to leaping logic and going straight to certainty and I don't think you've escaped that yet. Best of luck with doing that I think you'll be able to just open your mind a bit. I'm heartened to hear that you don't have any strong opinions about people's personal experiences I'm totally with you on that.

> I wonder why this topic triggers it?

I think that this is one of those topics that is pefectly ready for inconclusive bike-shedding: easy to build an opinion and argue about it "safely" - without any risk of losing someone's face when proven wrong due to insufficient data. It's some kind of sport where after the match both sides gp home feeling superior to the other because there's no objective way to establish the winner.

Totally with you on that. The point you make is the key where there's no risk for being wrong. You have no skin in the game you can be a armchair, in the stands commentator, who doesn't actually have to get any results, and you're not wearing it for any choices or for the accuracy of what you're saying. Combine that with ego and the desire to lord it over other people by pretending they're idiots and I think you have a large part of the explanation for how people interact about this.

This dynamic is not confined to this topic obviously but I think it's kind of a tragedy because it would be interesting and great to see some real logical scientific investigation of this stuff you know from all different actors, just like it would to see real investigation of parapsychological phenomenon, but there's too much craziness, stigma and exactly what you said involved for that to happen easily I think.

That to me is a tragedy and major missed opportunity for us humans to learn something to push forward our knowledge at the frontier of what we understand, in the place where science should really excel, and should really be able to be like a shield to go beyond our limitations of ego, group think and emotion... it's the exact place where in these topics it's the weakest.

So the very things that we could understand more about that are so interesting it's like we've crippled ourselves from doing that because of our mass psychology and however these topics have been manipulated by whoever.

The evidence in question is shaky at best, but even taking it at face value, it's evidence of...something. Our limited understanding and ability to collect and categorize information, perhaps. It's quite the stretch for it to be evidence of aliens, particulary of the kind that can be covered up by a government conspiracy. The whole theory is based on incredibly shaky foundations - we struggle to define what is sentience(what if we're not sentient? what if stars are?), what is life, whether there even is life in the solar system, what that life would look like(why would it use spaceships?), whether it would be even detectable with our senses and apparatus, and many more questionable assumptions to arrive to our concept of aliens "visiting" us.

"Somewhere in the middle" would be "yeah, I don't know what causes that, but neither do you" - that leaves us pretty much nowhere, very very far from aliens.

I agree and that's where I think we should be. I don't agree with your interpretation that it's only evidence of our inability to collect evidence I agree with your ambiguity. I have no idea what this is about I have no personal experiences of any of this but I don't doubt the people who say they have. What I doubt is the so called program insider whistler blower testimony. maybe that's ungenerous of me but I just suspect that it's probably easier to run a disinformation campaign with a small number of vocal so-called insiders actually just disinfo agents than it is, to get all of these people making up stories.

Tho as other people have said maybe they're just copying other people. Which I think is a good point but I'm reluctant to believe that. I genuinely trust the people who come forward and say this crazy shit happened. Because there's so many of them and it's gone on for such a long time. Also, i see there's no motivation to fabricate, not because there's no money and no fame, not because people are uninterested in money and fame, it's just because I don't think that so many people are so morally corrupt that they would just invent this stuff as a way to get money and fame for themselves. I guess I just have a little more faith in people perhaps a little too much faith than to think that.

If you have some please send me some links I would love to get more answers and understanding about this.

There are no easy links for this. You have to just research any given supposed UFO sighting, and if you actually try, you will find that people have most likely found an entirely reasonable and utterly boring explanation for it, that has not spread anywhere near as far and wide as the claim that it is a mysterious spacecraft, because the spacecraft is exciting and the explanation of what it actually is is not.

Sorry this is not true. I've done that and seen reports of lights that were explained away. But stories of encounters with beings and abductions? These things are not so easily explained away.

And even though I trust them much less than the random individuals who claim they have experiences, the countless government ex officials who repeat story after story of reverse engineered technology, of interviewing people who have encounters and of acquiring objects that were given to them and acquiring photographs that they took and classifying those objects and photographs.

I think there's two or three things I want to say one is I'm sorry but it seems like sort of willful blindness on your part if you are saying that you think every single report of something like this has been explained away. and that's okay if you don't want to look at this I'm not saying that you need to look at something that scares you or that you're not interested in. I'm not even saying you have to own it and say yeah I just don't want to know about this stuff so I'm just saying it doesn't exist. If you want to do that that's your choice and that's okay and I'm okay with that. I think it would be great if that were the case and you would have said yeah I just don't want to know about this so I'm just going to pretend it's not true, rather than pretend like what you're saying is the truth but I don't even require you to do that. It's okay to live in that pretend. It's a scary crazy kind of subject that I don't think anyone really knows about. So not looking at it at all is pretty smart I think.

The other thing is I sort of reject the memetic idea that UFO story spread because they're interesting and explanations don't spread. I certainly think you can find a lot of explanations if you go looking for UFO stories, but I think debunking actually does spread because it's like a mental algorithm it's like a generally applicable technique that you can apply to any story. I'm not saying that lessens it's quality as a form of skepticism I'm just saying I believe that makes it easier for debunking to actually spread because you can remember when you see a new story you can remember all of the debunking methods and start to pick that apart. But for a story to spread you actually have to spread it from The source because a story is specific so you have to spread the details but a debunking method is just a general method that can apply to many stories.

The third thing that I think is characterizing explanations these days is they seem more crazy more desperate and more reaching then just admitting that there's something going on here. Like the explanations are such crazy mental gymnastics that's sort of like the crazy people have become the debunkers the crazy people have become the ones performing these mental gymnastics to try to explain away things that it looks like they just don't want to face. I really think the tide has turned and that's what a lot of people explaining this stuff away now look like whereas in the past the people debunking it were very much seen as you know sort of logical and sensible but now they don't have that protection. But I believe there's still a lot of stigma attached to it

People lie. People hallucinate. People imagine things. That's really all there is to it.