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Given real aliens, how can you be sure of making any claims at all about their civilization/technology/culture/anything without having the sort of observational evidence that would be necessary to make such claims? 

We're in Cartesian Demon territory when discussing these theoretical others. We can plop our human notions on top of them all we want, but unless we have direct, observable evidence of the way "they" think/operate/whatever, we can just as easily assume any given conclusion about them as just as likely as any other. And that includes all the N conclusions we haven't even thought of (or simply can't conceive of due to our necessarily human viewpoint).

It seems wildly overconfident to make any claims about them at all that aren't completely hypothetical in the way you describe in your other reply here. Your idea that they either have to have capped tech or be actively trolling is itself just a hypothesis at best, and an idea at worst.

All filtered evidence is good for is formulating hypotheses, or even just inspiring ideas that are not hypotheses.

He's provided classified information to congress already yes. The intelligence committees in both houses I believe.

Information on these vehicles is being illegally withheld from Congress, Grusch told the Debrief. Grusch said when he turned over classified information about the vehicles to Congress he suffered retaliation from government officials. He left the government in April after a 14-year career in US intelligence.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/whistleblower-ufo-alien-tech-spacecraft

The one you linked is a new set of hearings planned by the House Oversight Committee.

See my other reply, but to add to that: the physical material and evidence that Grusch claims to have (second-hand accounts or no, though he does claim to have names, locations, photos, etc.) is all classified. Grusch could have pulled a Snowden, perhaps, and leaked it all directly, but I don't think that would have been as effective as what he's doing right now, because still no one would have reason to really believe him. What he's doing instead is going through the proper government channels, pulling the proper government levers, with the proper people in the proper positions of power (namely the ICIG and Congress) in order to get his allegations investigated properly.

"Show me the physical material" is right. The thing is, Grusch, and others in his position, are not able to do that without risking serious legal repercussions. Instead, they're using the proper whistleblower protections and legislation written out to help them come forward with these claims in a proper way that actually gets them investigated by the right people. That's important. That's how we actually get answers to any of this (whatever those answers turn out to be). If he just Snowden'd the whole thing, I think people like you would be like "Yeah, bullshit, whatever," and move on, just like with any of the other wild claims that have come out through improper channels (Bob Lazar, etc.). 

If instead he comes to the ICIG and Congress with it and gets them to do a full-on investigation that then produces answers, people like you are going to be much more likely to take the matter seriously.

The thing that I think you're missing, personally, is that David Grusch is really not asking any of us to believe his account just based on his words in an interview. His words as of now are not the thing that matters. What matters is the hundreds of pages and photos and hours of testimony given under oath to the Intelligence Community Inspector General and Congress. That's the evidence that matters, not Grusch's words.

I don't know if I can believe Grusch, because I too haven't seen the things he claims to have, the sources, documents, names, locations, etc. But you know who has? The ICIG. And he has deemed Grusch's allegations credible and urgent. It is the ICIG I'm choosing to "believe" right now, in so far as there is anything to believe in. Or maybe not even him, as a person, but the office and legal procedures and government apparatus he represents.

If someone otherwise credible claims they can extract energy from the "quantum vacuum" without explaining to me how they did it, of course I would be incredulous. But if it was shown that they provided hours upon hours of sworn testimony to officials at the Department of Energy, who then said they were taking it very seriously, then my ears would prick up. Then I would go, "Oh, huh, some otherwise serious people in a serious bureaucracy dedicated to these things are taking this person's claims seriously. I wonder what that's about? Surely if there was nothing there they would not be taking him seriously."

That's the point we're at here. I'm not inclined to believe there's something to what Grusch is saying based on his words in an interview. I'm inclined to believe there's something because an entire government apparatus (who has actually seen the evidence Grusch claims to have in his possession) is taking him seriously. And that, to me, seems worth taking seriously right now.

The same basic principles would apply, though, no? For essentially 10-20 years, MIRI was shouting into the void. Only now that the technology is taking off are people actually taking it seriously and starting to work on the problem. Whether it was known about or not, the point is that only a small handful of people were taking it seriously and trying to come up with innovative solutions.

Even now that AI is immensely popular, isn't the estimation that still only about 100-300 people are working on solving AI alignment full time? And that that's been one of the biggest hurdles to progress? The thing that all AI safety people have essentially been trying to do is to get more people working on the hard problems.

It's funny, because it's kind of like the same story with AI safety and alignment. Why no progress? Well, we've only had like 100-300 people taking it seriously and working on it.

So then your argument should be something like: "I don't think any of these sources are credible at this time and therefore don't find anything they present to be valid."

Your argument should not be to misrepresent what the sources actually say.

I totally get the impulse, but I am getting a little sick of folks just dismissing completely out of hand without even engaging with the information.

From the original Debrief article:

[Grusch] said he reported to Congress on the existence of a decades-long “publicly unknown Cold War for recovered and exploited physical material – a competition with near-peer adversaries over the years to identify UAP crashes/landings and retrieve the material for exploitation/reverse engineering to garner asymmetric national defense advantages.”

Edit: oops, meant to reply directly to shminux, my b. Leaving it here for now.

Exactly. The entire thrust behind Grusch's allegations is that this is being hidden from basically any and all oversight through very, very tight compartmentalization.

I find this Above the Law article to be a rational take on the parts of this that actually seem compelling.

Pretty much, in so far as any of this has legs, it's the boring, normal legal proceedings that are the most interesting thing here. Yes there have been "whistleblowers" in the past, but only in the prosaic sense. This is the first time someone is using the actual whistleblower protections and procedures to come forward with stuff through entirely official channels.

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