Forget the Pentagon Report, math can tell us if aliens exist
Are UFOs evidence aliens exist?
My verdict
The latest UFO revelations from the US government doesn’t make me update in the direction of aliens much. Sure, there is lots of weird footage. But it could be explained by many other things: there are no green blobs demanding to be taken to our leader. There’s not even a photo of an alien. Given thatearlier researchalso has made me think the universe is pretty empty, I end up with a very low personal probability estimate of UFOs being aliens.
Here’s my calculation. I start with assuming that aliens visiting is pretty unlikely – I place it somewhere around one in a billion. Why? Because I think the probability of intelligent life per planetis really low, and if there were any out there, it would probablyspread ona cosmic scale. Indeed, that we haven’t been paved over already is animportant piece of evidence.
As for the specificity of the evidence, I accept that weird things show up, but none of it looks particular for aliens. So my Bayes factor is at best 2 or so (and I think that is too much, actually). So I end up giving a one in 500 million chance to UFOs being aliens after looking at the footage.
One should, however,recognise the great uncertaintyhere: that one in a billion estimate is based on arguments thatcould be wrongand are debatable.
Now imagine I see every TV channel showing footage of a green blob demanding an audience with the UN Secretary General. If it was a real alien, the probability of the footage would be 1. But the probability that it is asuper-elaborate prankor that I had a psychotic break is maybe 1 in 1,000 (psychosis is far more commonthan many think). So by dividing 1 by 1/000, I would get a Bayes factor of 1,000 – boosting my estimate by a factor of 1,000. When I then multiply that, per the equation, by the 1 in a billion probability of aliens visiting, I get a total probability of two in a million.
This would not be enough to think it must be real. But it would be alarming enough to check if my friends are seeing the same thing. Surely they can’t all go mad at the same time – that would be even less likely. If they agree I would boost my estimate by a few more orders of magnitude, to maybe 1/10. I would also check for evidence that it isn’t a super-prank.
As for the current evidence, what would convince me otherwise? More specific evidence, not just blurry lights moving apparently fast. Science did not believe in meteorites until trustworthy, multiple witnessesbrought in rocksfound to be unknown minerals (a good Bayes factor), and our understanding of the solar system allowed for asteroids.
I suspect actual evidence for visits from extraterrestrial intelligence will be hard to miss. Trying to explain away the weakness of current evidence as aliens being cleverly stealthy does not make them more likely since it makes the evidence unspecific. The search will no doubt go on, but we should look for specific things, not blurry ones.
This article by AndersSandberg, James Martin Research Fellow, Future of Humanity Institute & Oxford Martin School,University of Oxfordis republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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