Philip Greengard writes:
This tweet by Nate Silver in which he says that the UFOs that made news recently are “almost definitely not aliens” reminded me of some discussions on your blog including this. I thought you had another blog post about motivations of pundits around uncertainty but I can’t find it. I’m not claiming this is any sort of “gotcha,” but I thought it was somewhat interesting/revealing that Nate felt the need to include “almost” in his prediction.
Yeah, that’s funny. Some further background is that a couple years ago a bunch of elite journalists were floating the idea that UFOs might actually be aliens, or that we should be taking UFOs seriously, or something like that. I had an exchange back in 2020 with a well-respected journalist who wrote, “The Navy is releasing videos of pilots watching something in the air that is blowing their minds, It’s worth exploring what it is! Likely it’s not aliens, but I’d like to know what it is.”
So I think Nate’s comment is just a reflection of the elite media bubble in which he lives. A couple other UFO-curious people who are well connected in the news media are Ezra Klein and Tyler Cowen.
Another way to put it is: Common sense and logic say that UFOs are not space aliens. On the other hand, it’s gotta be that millions of Americans believe it . . . aaaah, here it is, from Gallup:
Four in 10 Americans now think some UFOs that people have spotted have been alien spacecraft visiting Earth from other planets or galaxies. This is up from a third saying so two years ago. Half, however, believe all such sightings can be explained by human activity or natural phenomena, while an additional 9% are unsure.
And, as I never tire of reminding you, polls find that 30% of Americans believe in ghosts. OK, polls aren’t perfect, but no matter how you slice it, lots of people believe in these things.
From that perspective, yeah, if 40% of Americans believe something, it’s no surprise that some fraction of journalists believe it too. Maybe not 40%, but even if it’s only 20%, or 10%, that’s still a bunch. Enough so that some might be personal friends of Nate, so he’ll think, “Sure, that space aliens thing seems pretty implausible, but my friends X and Y are very reasonable people, and they believe it, so maybe there’s something there . . .”
It all sounds funny to Philip and me, but that’s just because we’re not linked into a big network of friends/colleagues who opinionate about such things. Nate Silver sees that Ezra Klein and Tyler Cowen believe that UFO’s might be space aliens, so . . . sure, why not at least hedge your bets on it, right? So I think there’s some contagion here, not exactly a consensus within the pundit class but within the range of consensus opinion.
P.S. More here from Palko, with a focus on the NYT being conned. I think part of this story, as noted above, is what might be called the lack of statistical independence of the news media: if Klein, Cowen, and Silver believe this, this is not three independent data points. The other thing is that there are all sorts of dangerous conspiracy theories out there now. Maybe some people like to entertain the theory that UFO’s are space aliens because this theory is so innocuous.
Just to summarize: Palko blames the New York Times for the mainstreaming of recent UFO hype. I guess this must be part of the story (UFO enthusiast gets the UFO assignment and runs with it), but I still see this is as more of a general elite media bubble. Neither Nate Silver nor Tyler Cowen work for the Times—indeed, either of them might well like to see the Times being taken down a peg—and I see their UFO-friendliness as an effect of being trapped in a media consensus.
Here’s another way to look at it. A few years ago, Nate wrote, “Elites can have whatever tastes they want and there’s no reason they ought to conform to mainstream culture. But I do think a lot of elites would fail a pop quiz on how the median American thinks and behaves, and that probably makes them a less effective advocate for their views.” There is of course no such thing as “the median American,” but I get what he’s saying. Lots of Americans believe in UFO’s, ghosts, etc. According to a Pew Research survey from 2021, 11% of Americans say that UFOs reported by people in the military are “definitely” evidence of intelligent life outside Earth (with 40% saying “probably,” 36% saying “probably not,” and 11% saying “definitely not”). Younger and less educated people are slightly more likely to answer “definitely” or “probably” to that question, but the variation by group is small; it’s close to 50% for every slice of the population. The “median American,” then, is torn on the issue, so Nate and the New York Times are in tune with America on this one. Next stop, ghosts (more here)!
P.P.S. Non-elite journalists are doing it too! But I guess they’re just leaping on the bandwagon. If it’s good enough for the New York Times, Nate Silver, Ezra Klein, and Tyler Cowen, it’s good enough for the smaller fish in the media pond.
P.P.P.S. Still more from Palko. It remains interesting that this hasn’t seemed to have become political yet. But maybe it will drift to the right, in the same way as many other conspiracy theories, in which case our news media overlords might start telling us that, by laughing at the idea of UFOs being space aliens, we’re just out-of-touch elitists. Nate and the NYT are ahead of the game by taking these ideas seriously already. They’re in touch with the common people in a way that Greengard, Palko, I, and the other 50% of Americans who are don’t believe that UFOs are space aliens will never be.
P.P.P.P.S. Still more here from Palko. It’s just sad to see all these media insiders fall for it. Again, though, millions of otherwise-savvy Americans believe in ghosts, too. I think the key is not that these otherwise-savvy media insiders are so receptive to the UFOs-as-space-aliens theory, as that something has changed and it’s acceptable for them to share their views. Probably lots of media insiders are receptive to ghosts, astrology, and other classic bits of pseudoscience and fraud (not to mention more serious things such as racism and anti-vaccine messages), but they won’t talk much about it because these ideas are generally considered ridiculous or taboo. But some impressive efforts by a handful of conspiracy-minded space-alien theorists have pushed this UFO thing into the mainstream.
I think there is a statisticians tendency to assume independence by default just because that is easiest to work with.
The behaviour of the media is coordinated, both directly and via herding strategies. Eg, watch this video of local news channels from around the US all reading from the same script:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=yXfRDC2NKY0
Whatever the mechanism, the ufo thing amounts to bread and circuses.
It helps keep your mind off corruption at the highest levels of the government and the accelerating transfer of wealth to the already wealthy/well-connected, along with loss of rights (privacy, freedom of movement, etc).
If someone provides interesting info on the technology or biology that could be fertile grounds for new ideas, then there is reason to be interested. Until then it is a distraction.
I thought one of the most interesting parts about the UFO craze was the NY Post (yes, really) article digging into the background of Skinwalker Ranch and its various claims like the dino-beaver: https://nypost.com/2023/03/21/ufo-believing-pentagon-bosses-missed-spy-craft-for-years/
It shows you how all of this super-sekrit government information and vague reports about UFOs winds up being an echo chamber double-counting the same information while laundering away the origins to cover up borderline (or maybe not so borderline) corruption/financial malfeasance and getting conflated with real things like reports on Chinese blimps/drones (which they are further accused of obscuring by their shenanigans, so their claims about fake UFO coverups wound up covering up real UFOs!).
A couple years ago we found out the FBI was redacting stuff like that they spent money on $70,000 tables.
That got me thinking area 51 was actually a giant continuous underground rave where clearance is your ticket. Behind all those redactions of documents about the site, there is actually news and gossip about the party.
I’m just hoping that UFOs are a sign that there’s intelligent life on earth!
No hope of that. I just (within the last minute) had someone come to my office and tell me about some congressional hearing about UFO’s that’s going on today….I don’t know what’s going on up there in Washington (or even if this person’s story is correct), but it sure doesn’t seem like a hopeful sign of intelligent life….at least in DC.
I have long thought that the enormous interstellar distances make it economically impractical to transport material goods from one star system to another. The supposed pilots of UFOs can not be here seeking any physical goods. Intellectual curiosity must be their driving force, and taking earthly developments back home must be driving any profit motive. This has led me to the inescapable conclusion that Life on Earth is a highly popular entertainment series back on Fomalhaut Six, or K’qqssi/Brrap in their language. The show has everything, suspense, drama, romance, and comedy. It is likely that they interfere directly in our affairs to increase the laughs; this certainly explains recent developments in our politics. This also explains the erratic behavior and crashes of their craft; show business types are not good drivers and are prone to intoxication.
So, to bring your argument back to earth, you are saying that even in 200-300 years we won’t have self-driving cars that work better than humans. I am very depressed.
“I’m not saying it’s aliens,” but, assuming our technological civilization persists for a few more centuries, and that our capabilities continue to advance, we will almost certainly send robots to stars systems that attract our curiosity. It seems probable to me that other “intelligent” beings would do the same. Living beings, not so much.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but it seems pretty clear that Nate is joking–saying “it’s almost definitely not aliens” is a direct strike against the incredibly irresponsibly credulous folks in Congress and establishment news media outlets who are “just asking questions” about “”UAPs””
Comparing reality to a film storyline where reviewers would argue the writers jumped the shark has been a common thing the past decade, given the ridiculousness of the reality of US politics in that timeframe.
Jack:
He’s definitely joking about the movie scenario thing. Regarding the space aliens more generally, I can’t be sure, and I haven’t been in contact with Nate for awhile, so all I can do is guess. My impression was that the “almost definitely” part was a just-in-case qualification. I’m guessing that Nate is in the same media bubble as NYT/Klein/Cowen, all of whom are treating the UFO-space-aliens thing as a live, if possibly unlikely, possibility. But, yeah, if he was joking all the way through, just replace all mentions of Nate above with NYT/Klein/Cowen.
I read it as following the general rule that you should basically never say something is definitely not true, on the grounds that 0 and 1 aren’t valid real-world probabilities. (That was my first reaction to this post; Nate is making the strongest not-aliens statement he can in good conscience make without at the least direct knowledge.)
That was my impression as well. I hate being definite on open questions. The chances of aliens is probably 1e-5000 but in is a possibility.
i would be curious to hear your case against aliens/UFOs on the merits. in your last post you debunked the slate piece by quoting a bunch of kooky thing the articles’ source had said about aliens. in this post you tease Nate Silver for qualifying a statement with “almost definitely” (suggesting the only acceptable prior puts a strict zero probability on aliens) and suggest that he came to this opinion from groupthink through the media bubble he is in with Ezra Klein and Tyler Cowen. it’s possible that I’m infected by groupthink too, but an extremely small but non-zero probability of aliens seems reasonable to me
Sam:
There are zillions of things with nonzero probability that don’t get taken seriously by the major news media. Speculative cancer cures, ancient astronauts, shroud of Turin, various claims of miracle cures . . . we used to use the Loch Ness monster as an example, but I don’t think anyone anywhere takes that seriously anymore . . . UFOs as space aliens are kinda like astrology: a ridiculous idea that is taken semi-seriously by the news media, often treated as a joke but sometimes given a kind of wry respect.
Regarding UFOs, you can follow the links to Palko’s posts for details. My impression is, that until a few years ago, the idea that UFOs are space aliens was believed by some sizable chunk of the general population but didn’t reach the “get taken seriously” level in the news media until some true believers managed to get some stories in the New York Times and elsewhere, and then the space aliens theory crawled up to respectability through a kind of media contagion. That’s what interests me, as indicated by the title of the above post.
One could argue, maybe correctly, that in the modern dispersed media environment, just about any belief that is shared by a large chunk of the population will eventually take its place in the news media. So maybe the UFO thing is just one example of this.
Finally, I have no “case against aliens/UFOs on the merits,” beyond the usual arguments shared by Palko regarding the tinfoil-hat nature of the sources of these claims, and the usual arguments about plausibility shared by Paul Campos here, for example.
P.S. You say that in my post I “tease” Nate. I’m not trying to tease him, nor am I trying to tease the other people I mention above. Evaluating evidence is a genuinely difficult problem, and it makes sense to rely in part on sources that we trust. Nate’s a skeptical guy, and I don’t think his reasoning is as simple as, “The NYT thinks UFOs might be space aliens, Tyler Cowen thinks UFOs might be space aliens, Ezra Klein thinks UFOs might be space aliens, therefore, I, Nate think UFOs might be space aliens.” Rather, the cautious endorsement of these sources gives Nate the sense, in this case mistaken, that we’re not in tinfoil hat territory. As a statistician and social scientist, I’m interested in the processes by which we judge evidence.
“UFOs as space aliens” covers a lot of ground.
Consider the weak form of the claim: at least one human has seen at least one UFO that was the artifact of an extraterrestrial intelligence. So, for instance, 128,000 years ago some hunter-gatherer in Siberia sees a shooting star that was in fact a falling satellite that had been orbiting our planet for the previous 700,000 years (inert except for the first few hundred presumably) and had finally suffered enough orbital disruptions and drag to enter the atmosphere and burn up. If we include stuff like that then…well, I still don’t know what probability I’d assign to the claim that “at least one human has seen at least one UFO that was the artifact of an extraterrestrial intelligence” but it wouldn’t be so low that I would mock the very idea. 0.01%? It’s hard to know how to assess it. If there are nearby space-faring civilizations that want us to know about them, we would know about them, so either there are no nearby space-faring civilizations or there is at least one and they are not making themselves known. (Obmention of the Fermi paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox and the Drake equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation ) but we might not be too many decades or centuries from launching an exploratory spacecraft to a nearby star, and if our civilization survives a million years then maybe we will have a fleet of self-replicating explorers checking out an ever-expanding sphere hundreds of light years across. If we grant that we might someday be able to do this — and the main impediments will not be technological — then why not others? So, OK, someone says they think there’s a 10% chance that this has happened, I think that’s high but I’m not saying they’re necessarily being stupid.
At the other extreme, you have the beliefs or claims that are more…well, more extreme: Earth has recently been visited by many spacecraft that have entered and left the Earth’s atmosphere, and the U.S. government (and presumably other governments) knows about them and is covering it up. This seems so goofy that it’s hard to take seriously.
The ability (and even desire) for a succession of governments (of the U.S. and other countries) to cover up something like this is part of the issue, and not a small part. But also you’d pretty much have to believe in some weird physics. If you want to launch something the weight of a small car into space, you need to eject a lot of material the opposite direction at high speed. You can imagine providing the energy with a nuclear reactor rather than by burning a skyscraper-sized-tower full of kerosene, but you’re still talking about an event that could be heard and seen for dozens of miles. A 5-meter-diameter silver sphere zipping soundlessly along just above the surface of the ocean, emitting an invisible propellant while accelerating at 6 g and shooting off to outer space… that’s pure fantasy.
Pure fantasy except there’s Navy footage of something doing something weird right? I mean, do you have a reasonable explanation for these videos? I can think of several, most of which are that it’s fabricated. If it’s not fabricated and it’s an object what kind of object is it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPcgSliHp5Y
and also
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TumprpOwHY
I find the whole thing fascinating mostly because I believe that a lot of these are legitimate human made vehicles. The “swarm” on the navy vessel off the coast of southern ca last year is also really interesting.
@Daniel Lakeland: You should look up Mick West. He’s a UFO skeptic and a very smart guy. I didn’t look at your YouTube videos, but Mick West has probably investigated them at some point. Here’s one random article about Mick West:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/11/i-study-ufos-and-i-dont-believe-the-alien-hype-heres-why
Alex, thanks it’s exactly the kind of analysis I’d like to see more of. When it comes to the swarm on the Navy ship off SoCal https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/video-of-mysterious-drone-swarm-over-navys-most-advanced-destroyer-released
It’s pretty clear to me this was normal human made drones, but **who was operating them?** and where were the operators physically? Were they being operated by the USN as an exercise that the sailors were unaware of? Were they being operated by a private organization? Were they being operated by a foreign military?
That Mick West article is quite sensible, but why did it even have to be written? Sigh.
Let’s get this straight. There aren’t any aliens, the singularity has already happened, it’s us, we’re the only singularity there has ever been or ever will be, and we’ll be gone when we’ve succeeded in making the only life-supporting planet in the whole universe non-life-supporting. (There was good news today, though. Japan restarted it’s oldest nuke! Yay! That much less coal burned.)
(I read pretty much the same sci-fi as Nick West (he must be old). From 4th through 6th grades. Then I outgrew it. The
Nine Billion Names of God was pretty good, though.)
David, the reason this stuff is needed is not because people think aliens are flying around, or at least, that’s not the reason I need it, the reason I need it is because I KNOW that experimental aircraft especially drones are widespread and we want to know what the capabilities are of powers like China, or Russia or whoever. Ukraine is currently probably the foremost authority on drones in warfare I guess.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at by focusing on ‘elites’. Tucker Carlson had a segment on UFOs … would you put him in the same elite category as Silver?
They’re definitely both elites, whether they’re in the same category is another story.
Sam:
I’m focusing on elites (which includes Carlson as well as the others listed above) because in the past it was my impression that the UFO-space-aliens thing was popular but did not get elite support. In the past, if someone like Silver or Klein or Cowen were to give credence to the idea that UFOs are space aliens, it would be an oddball position to take, but not so much anymore.
Yea I guess that ‘tic-tac’ navy video raised a lot of questions https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000007110056/ufo-video-navy.html
I’d say maybe part of what’s behind Nate’s hedging on this issus is his political orientation, that leans him towards contrarian distrust of the man.
Large segments of the contrarian ecosphere have wrapped their arms around the UAP hoopla; e.g., Eric Weinstein, Rogan, Shellenberger, Taibbi.
The Shellenberger reporting — that if bad guvmint has been hiding aliens’ bodies and football field-sized ships for 8 decades, swooping down in cahoots with other governments around the globe to suppress any of the voluminous evidence, even killing people to make sure no one finds out — overlaps with the contrarian ecosphere…
…there’s a strong overlay with other politically adjacent conspiratorial beliefs, like about Big Pharma and vaccines, the lab leak conspiracy, etc.
It’s reflective of a pattern: start with some truths or credible ideas (military pilots have seen things they can’t explain, there have been lab leaks before and a covid lab leak is theoretically possible) and go from there. Nate’s gone off the rails on the lab leak stuff in ways that strongly align with the kind of conspiracy ideation we’ve seen on aliens. Even smart analysts like Nate are susceptible to these patterns.
For me, the question isn’t whether it’s theoretically possible that aliens have visited the earth or certainly whether life forms exist in other places in the universe, but how people treat evidence. The way Nate has treated evidence on the lab leak theory makes, for me, his treatment of evidence in any other topic suspect (when there’s a political overlay) Not to say he’s always wrong, of course. I’ve always liked his stuff on election prediction analysis.
Not “that if bad guvmint…”. Should be “that big bad guvmint…”
You appear misinformed, the “contrarian ecosphere” thinks it is priming for a *fake* alien invasion planned decades ago called project bluebeam:
https://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/12/19/how_conspiracy_theorists_on_reddit_4chan_are_reacting_to_the_new_york_times.html
?
Obviously, there are different strands.
But I’m pretty aware of what’s going on in those parts I mentioned (and if say more generally, especially if we include Tucker, etc.) and that article from 6 years ago doesn’t describe it.
Read the “journalism” from Shellenberger about the “evidence” of the mult-decades long conspiracy to hide a huge volume of evidence; bodies, recovered spacecraft, etc.
Then read his “journalism” on the lab leak.
I don’t know what any of them are saying, so looked it up. The very first sentence I found on the topic was:
https://public.substack.com/p/alleged-death-threats-against-ufo
As I said you appear to be misinformed. The ideas you attribute to “contrarian ecosystem” actually the mainstream ideas.
What is Nate’s “political orientation”? I though he was center-left.
The quote was about the audience. I have never heard of Shellenberger before, and dont know what he believes. But even he acknowledges the “contrarian ecosystem” obviously does not buy the alien angle. According to you apparently even if the idea is being pushed by an important influncer.
You are simply misinformed, and/or perhaps assume that members of the “contrarian ecosystem” believe whatever a few prominent people say or something.
Sorry, was to Joshua.
I don’t know if he’s center-left, or center or center-right. I not sure what those terms even mean anymore, with the whole horseshoe thing going on.
He’s been heavily contrarian throughout the pandemic, at least on covid-related issues. I get the sense he’s pretty into the “anti-woke” orientation. In lieu of what I find to reliable ways to classify people as “left” or “right” or whatever, I look at categories like “anti-woke contrarian” as useful political classifications.
Shellenberger is pretty influential in the IDW adjacent, anti-woke, heterodox, contrarian crowd, along with Taibbi, Rogan, the Weinsteins, Jordan Peterson, Lex Friedman, Heather Heying, with overlaps onto Bari Weis, Bill Maher, Tulsi Gabbard, Michael Tracey, Jesse Singal, Mac Blumenthal, Aaron Mate,.Steven Pinker, Sam Harris, Jonathan Heidt, Tucker Carlson, etc. Admittedly, it can be a loose affiliation, with people more or less tightly configured on many issues except anti-wokism and perhaps the Lab Leak hypothesis which unites pretty much all of them. And Nate is prolly one of the less tightly affiliated on quite few topics but he’s right at ground central on the lab leak. Mind you just thinking a lab leak is probable is not in itself the inclusion criterion there. It’s the absolute belief in the Fauci-controlled conspiracy that’s the basically key feature.
A fair slice of that group have been pretty heavily into the decades long government conspiracy to hide the aliens thing. You can choose to not believe that if you want to. Up to you.
It connects to Shellenberger’s longtime activism with the Breakthrough Institute and the Ecomodernist Manifesto, and runs through his breathless “journalism” on the lab leak hypothesis, the Twitter files, the librul DA responsibility for crime and homelessness and addiction in San Francisco, and the UAP “whistleblower.”
I finally put my finger on it. This it like hearing about the effects of marijuana from someone whose only experience with it was watching reefer madness.
And viruses leak from these BSL-3/4 labs all the time. It is a biannual event, probably more frequent but we don’t hear about it. We know even covid leaked from a lab in 2021:
https://fortune.com/2021/12/10/taiwan-investigates-covid-lab-leak-scientist-tests-positive-bite-infected-mouse/
Then consider the lab had a grant to study furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses, then one first showed up blocks away and workers at the lab disappeared. Then there are all the other oddities surrounding the Chinese and US government responses. The idea we should take health advice from people who can’t connect these dots is absolutely laughable.
The worst is that these labs are still ongoing near major population centers all around the world, leaking viruses into the surrounding population. And to what end? Apparently to pretend vaccines that have no apparent benefit on infection, transmission, or all cause mortality are a successful medical intervention.
I love how selective your skepticism is.
And I love even more how selective is your research methodology.
Michael Shellenberger’s reporting (at the start) was that military and intelligence contractors has 12 or more.spacecraft and alien bodies.
Start here:
https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1665927350431944705?s=20
…intelligence and intelligence contractors say the US government has…
(and has been hiding the evidence for decades, killing people to hide the evidence, and preventing even other governments or journalists or just everyday people all over the world from getting this supposedly abundant and reliable evidence out)
OMG, where is Randi when we need him? These attention-seeking freaks reemerge at predictable intervals, locust-like, to put on the exact same performance and a gullible public can’t help but lap it up. But the sad twist this time is that people we expected to be skeptical – looking at you, Ezra and Tyler – have pushed to the front of the sideshow line. That’s been the depressing part of it all. Hopefully it will die down like every other time so we can have 7 years of quiet.