Lurker, Rationalist.
RatsWrongAboutUAP
UFO Betting: Put Up or Shut Up
An Update: I have now paid out $4864 to 9 different bettors. From this point on I will only be accepting offers with at least 150:1 odds. I would love to make more bets, so feel free to reach out with offers at any point. Thanks to everyone who has already finalized bets with me.
Glad to have made this bet with you!
Glad we could make this bet!
My Offer:
I Send you $50 Immediately, You pay out $10,000 if I win
I want a 5 year time horizon.
I am betting that one of the “very weird” hypotheses turns out true. Bet resolves in my favor if within 5 years its determined that >0 UAP are explained by:
Literal aliens
Magic/spiritual/paranormal/psychic phenomenon
Time travel
Leftovers of an ancient civilization / Some other unknown non-human advanced civilization on earth
Some other explanation that’s of this level of “very weird”
Explicitly excluding merely hyper-advanced human tech
I forfeit any and all potential “gotcha” cases.
Determination of resolution to be up to you.
I reserve the right to appeal to the LW community. [I will not abuse this right]
If these terms are acceptable, please provide a means for me to pay you. I would prefer a crypto address, but will make whatever work. Upon payment please post an acknowledgement of payment.
I offer the same terms to anyone else [with a nontrivial post history].
Sure, lets bet. Reach out with means to receive payment
Will reach out
No.
Happy to make this bet!
I’m afraid you are going to lose this bet. So long as people come can up with a bitcoin/eth address or a paypal account, there will be no issues.
I know I have no post history, and thus these are just words, but I claim to be a reasonable, rational person who (tries) to operates exclusively in good faith. I’ve been a lurker of LW and LW adjacent people for a few years now. I learned about lesswrong because I stumbled across eilizers work on decision theories and then subsequently got agi-safety-pilled. I considered myself a “standard materialist atheist” my entire adult life and most of my childhood.
Most of your concerns seemed to ignore that the explanations have to ultimately trace back to explaining ufo cases or are otherwise very pedantic. Yes ancient civ’s have ruins, yes dinosaurs might have been agrarian, but do either of those address uap cases today? I only win the bet if my counterparty thinks so (or LW does).
I tried in good faith to try and cut at the seems of the two world models (all prosaic, not all prosaic) as best I could. I gave multiple lexical tests to make clear what kinds of things I have in mind.
I have no intention of getting into nasty disagreements over resolution. But I agree it would be good to have the adjudication method be explicit, though I’m not sure how best to do that. In a world in which I win the bet, I figured I would be making a big post anyways laying out a bit more about me and some of this stuff. If prominent voices contest my win then I would stand down from collecting. I expect a world in which I win is also a world in which LW is pretty unanimous that I won.
You’re right, I forgot to mention the nontrivial post history in my post, an oversight on my part. That said I was only ever going to engage with people with established reputations because obviously. I reserved the right to choose who to bet with.
Glad we could make this bet!
Anyone who is confident no ufos are truly anomalous, please feel free to extend me odds for a bet here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/t5W87hQF5gKyTofQB/ufo-betting-put-up-or-shut-up
I have already paid out to two betters so far, and would like some more
This is the best offer so far! I would love to enter into this bet with you.
I would be perfectly happy with either of those methods of resolution in the event there’s a disagreement. In that event I would be happy for you to more or less entirely dictate the specifics of that process. I commit to operating in good faith with you, and I obviously take as a given that you will do the same.
If you have any other concerns please let me know. Otherwise please provide (either publicly or privately) a means for me to pay you. We can then both confirm here that we have begun our bet.
Awesome! DM me and we can figure out payment options
Sounds good to me! I will send $200 worth of bitcoin to this address sometime today
Curious what your thoughts are now? Still mulling it over? I would like to make this bet, so please let me know if there are any further concerns you have.
I assume you mean the central example, some indisputably organic entities arriving from another star system on something indisputably like a “spacecraft”
Extraterrestrial in origin, biological or otherwise (their autonomous probes, for instance).
Hmm, I don’t even know how to identify something like that.
Example of what resolution in my favor might look like: In 5 years time we are looking back and saying “Damn, I cant believe some ufos were actually demons this whole time. Wild”
In general, what I’m trying to bet on is the world and rationalist community experiencing some significant ontological shock. If the community stops, melts, and catches fire, I win the bet.
The explanation still has to ultimately relate back to explaining uap.
LW’s with a reputation are a far cry from random internet strangers. I made the bet terms as such to be as frictionless and minimum downside for my counterparties as possible to try and eliminate as many concerns as possible, I do want to make bets afterall.
If I get stiffed I’d be pretty surprised, but I take that risk knowingly.