@andeslodes, congratulations on a very good first post. You clearly explained your point of view, and went through the text of the proposed Act and the background of the relevant Senators in enough detail to understand why this is important new information. I was already taking the prospect of aliens somewhat-seriously, but I updated higher after this post.
I notice that Metaculus is at a just 1.1% probability confirmed alien tech by 2030, which seems low.
Thank you for the kind words. I do think that the probability is too low, especially given the new revelations, but I believe that this is also due to the choice of wording. The “alien technology has visited our solar system” part smuggles in a few assumptions which “uncorrelate” the question a bit from the recent evidence. To clarify:
The “alien technology” part makes this refer to extraterrestrials and the “solar system” part seems to indicate that said extraterrestrials originate from outside our solar system. So the question alludes to the category of cases where “aliens advanced enough to cross interstellar distances come all the way here only to crash on our planet and to fail at observing us without being noticed” which, as Eliezer notes, does have strong arguments against it. So, I do think it should be higher, but imo the (hypothetical) question that would warrant the largest jump in probability after the publication of the UAP disclosure act, would be something along the lines of “Will this current UAP situation turn out to have an ontologically-shocking explanation?”.
@andeslodes, congratulations on a very good first post. You clearly explained your point of view, and went through the text of the proposed Act and the background of the relevant Senators in enough detail to understand why this is important new information. I was already taking the prospect of aliens somewhat-seriously, but I updated higher after this post.
I notice that Metaculus is at a just 1.1% probability confirmed alien tech by 2030, which seems low.
Thank you for the kind words. I do think that the probability is too low, especially given the new revelations, but I believe that this is also due to the choice of wording. The “alien technology has visited our solar system” part smuggles in a few assumptions which “uncorrelate” the question a bit from the recent evidence. To clarify:
The “alien technology” part makes this refer to extraterrestrials and the “solar system” part seems to indicate that said extraterrestrials originate from outside our solar system. So the question alludes to the category of cases where “aliens advanced enough to cross interstellar distances come all the way here only to crash on our planet and to fail at observing us without being noticed” which, as Eliezer notes, does have strong arguments against it. So, I do think it should be higher, but imo the (hypothetical) question that would warrant the largest jump in probability after the publication of the UAP disclosure act, would be something along the lines of “Will this current UAP situation turn out to have an ontologically-shocking explanation?”.