There are long tails in the distribution of the universe. I'm not sure where UAP fall in, but this thought exercise from Sagan helps to characterize my skepticism: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage

I don’t pay much attention to the current shenanigans, but bone-headed rationalism has way too much opinions about black swan type of events. There’s never enough data to use reason in the way they think. A low expected value with high uncertainty isn’t a place to swing empiricism around like a sledgehammer.

> There are long tails in the distribution of the universe.

This is exactly the issue. There are no such “tails” on 0 data. Empiricism is a powerful tool, but it’s not universal.

I approach the tails as being open to it (a null hypothesis) until data and experimentation can reject -- within reason, as snake oil sales happen.

I think it's okay to be cynical about this and extremely skeptical. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all we're presented with is "yeah, I think so" and "I can't talk about this in an open session".

How would you suggest one approach this kind of hearing to be considered doing so in good faith?

Extraordinarily claims require extraordinary evidence and reasonably demand healthy skepticism, but HackerNews requires engaging and thoughtful discussion. These threads are constantly full of the same flippantly dismissive remarks, as if it's a novel critique to mention that everyone has a good camera in their pocket these days but hasn't recorded a UFO on it.

HackerNews can be skeptical in interesting, informative ways - the discussion from yesterday of how the superconductor video could have been faked or could be representing something other than a superconductor is a great example. The UFO discussions are usually not that.

The low effort comments on this topic is surprising, considering that this community has many experts in respective scientific fields. There is not much effort to bring deep legal/scientific critical analysis into the subject. Even if this is an extraordinary claim, that it is backed by so many professional witnesses should warrant sincere investigation rather than banter and ridicule.

Stop assuming everyone who is speaking into a microphone is lying in one form or another, or too stupid to be trustworthy.

Thousands and thousands of people have experienced extraordinary things over decades and multiple continents. All people here are willing to consider is that there is financial gain to be had, etc. Not that they are actually being truthful, and seeking nothing more than understanding.

Plus come ON. There's a chance that we possess something that can negate the Higgs field. That's huge beyond words.

> Thousands and thousands of people have experienced extraordinary things over decades and multiple continents.

And there are very reasonable reasons for why they think they experienced that. Just go back a hundred years and read what many people believed in back then. Most of which are trivially false (from our perspective).

Heck, religion is still a thing today. More religions than can fit together so if nothing else we know most of them are wrong.

Are you asking for good faith, or just faith? A million debunkable/explainable-with-something-else cases is equivalent to zero cases. I mostly see people ask for one, single, hard piece of evidence. In all of the millions. Something that can't be explained much more plausibly.

You seem to think the only two options are they're lying or they magically know exactly what they experienced and should be trusted implicitly.

There's a lot more to it than that. People hallucinate and confabulate. People see patterns where there are none all the time. People unintentionally modify their own memories in all sorts of ways whenever they recall them. People believe things with no evidence just because they want to. People embellish their stories to fit the conclusion they want.

Hardly. I think most people see that there just isn't any evidence without better physical explanations and that the premise is shaky in the first place. The cynical attitude you echo doesn't get much play because it is incoherent, and I've literally never seen the ridicule you speak of. In other contexts I have seen people with deboned arguments later summarize the experience as being told they were stupid but that was clearly the emotional reality and not in any way connected to a sequence of events.

Part of treating a matter in good faith is understanding when your position is at the very least highly unlikely, or purely speculative. It is not a code word that means other people must treat you as having a good argument, more like they must treat you seriously - and some arguments presented in seriousness are not worth much more than a brusque dismissal.

Ridicule is never a proper response to anything. Here is a reasonable criticism to UFOs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXZWV6NOuF8 saying we don't have evidence that can be evaluated scientifically.

EDIT: wrong link

They probably do have teams to retrieve crashed aircraft/drones/missiles etc being tested. Its not like they are going to broadcast to everyone what is crashing and how often, just cuz random people see things they cant explain.

>> Regardless, almost no one here is willing to treat this subject with good faith, only to discourage curiosity and encourage dismissive ridicule.

Yes. The same as -not everyone but many- here will treat magic, homeopathy, osteopathy, chiropody, Christian science (!), voodoo, astrology, tarot readings, palmistry, and other quackery. Being scientifically curious doesn't mean believeing any old bullshit anyone tries to sell you.

or allocating resources to listen to these things.

Life is a very well established phenomenon, and there is a high statistical chance of it occurring elsewhere in the universe.

With powerful enough computers and telescopes, scanning other planets for life or intelligent life will become far easier and more successful, and as a species which has only worked on space travel for some 60 years who is to say that one which has worked on it for 100s of years would not be able to travel large distances to explore their indicated "intelligent life" planets.

What confuses some people, and me, however, is the why. But I think we might be overplaying the significance of visitation on their end. We don't consider it significant when we drive from LA to NY as we've been able to for a long time. If you took a caveman during neolithic times across the world in a Ferrari he would probably experience extreme ontological shock. If I had the capacity for interplanetary travel I would definitely use it for my own personal entertainment and curiosity.

Calling this "any old bullshit" and putting it on the same level as magic only further stigmatises the issue, and prevents thorough investigation into the issue and delays increased transparency. Which is the only way to cure speculation, true or untrue

I think Hume's 'Of Miracles' (1748) provides a good framework here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Miracles

Hume's argument against miracles is based on : 1) The uniformity of nature (the laws of nature are regular and unchanging) 2) The probability of testimony; based on the number and character of witnesses, and circumstances in which the miracle was witnessed. 3)A miracle is defined by Hume to be a violation of a law of nature. Not just very low likelihood events. (Though not explicitly a violation of the laws of nature themselves, Aliens visiting Earth would require violating the laws of nature as we currently understand them)

So, Hume argues, the probability of a miracle occurring is very low and the probability of a false report of a miracle occurring is much higher. Therefore, it is more likely that a report of a miracle is false than that it is true in nearly all circumstances.

I think this argument pretty much holds for Aliens and UFOs too.