Jun 24, 2023 05:12 PM
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/inde...e-shifted/
INTRO: In an interview for Newsweek, Michio Kaku was asked about UFOs. Here’s his response:
Let me start with two premises that I think should be noncontroversial. The first is that there is a phenomenon of alleged encounters with aliens – sightings, stories of abductions, videos and photographs, alleged government cover-ups, and others. We can stipulate that people see things they can’t explain and tell stories of alien encounters (sometimes under hypnosis). I will refer to this collectively as the “UFO phenomenon”. The second premise might get some pushback from believers, but I think is completely reasonable – there is no smoking gun unequivocal evidence that aliens are visiting or have visited the Earth. If there were, there would be no debate. You can still believe that the evidence favors the conclusion that we are being visited, that at least some of the UFO phenomena is produced by actual aliens, while accepting the premise that there is no undeniable proof.
If you accept these two premises – there is a UFO phenomenon in the absence if iron-clad proof – then we can talk about competing hypotheses to explain these premises. There are two main contenders. The first is what I have called the “psychocultural” hypothesis. This contends that all UFO phenomena are a mix of misidentified natural or terrestrial phenomena, the many mechanisms of self-deception, cultural belief, delusion, and opportunism. The second is the alien hypothesis, that at least some UFO phenomena are alien craft, encounters with aliens, crashed saucers, or alien experiments. There are other hypotheses (the tongue-in-cheek psychic bigfeet from the future), but they are fringe enough that we can ignore them for now, and in fact I feel they can be subsumed in this debate under the alien hypothesis.
Scientists, and certainly skeptics, have long maintained that the burden of proof lies heavily with the alien hypothesis. Does Michio have a point that this burden of proof has now shifted? I think the answer is a clear no. This burden of proof is based largely on Occam’s razor – when there are competing hypotheses, the one that introduces the fewest new assumptions should be preferred. I would state it more precisely as – the hypothesis that has the lightest assumption burden. This combines both the number of required assumptions and how big or unlikely those assumptions are. The alien hypothesis has the burden of a massive assumption, that aliens are visiting the Earth. The psychocultural hypothesis, on the other hand, has a very light assumption burden. It is built out of mostly entirely known and fairly well understood psychological phenomena. We really don’t have to invent anything new, just extend our understanding of the frailty of human perception, memory, and belief.
We can compare these two hypotheses in other ways... (MORE - details)
INTRO: In an interview for Newsweek, Michio Kaku was asked about UFOs. Here’s his response:
Well, first of all, I think that there’s been a game changer. In the old days, the burden of proof was on the true believers to prove that what they saw last night was a flying saucer of some sort. Now the burden of proof has shifted. Now it’s the military, the military has to prove that these aren’t extraterrestrial objects.
He goes on to say that there are now multiple lines of evidence that need to be explained, and that this is the “gold standard” in science. It’s a good example of the fact that scientists and science communicators are not necessarily good scientific skeptics who know how to deal with fringe claims. There is an entirely different skill set and knowledge base necessary to deal with the UFO question than to explain physics to a lay audience. To illustrate, I am going to outline why I strongly disagree with Michio.Let me start with two premises that I think should be noncontroversial. The first is that there is a phenomenon of alleged encounters with aliens – sightings, stories of abductions, videos and photographs, alleged government cover-ups, and others. We can stipulate that people see things they can’t explain and tell stories of alien encounters (sometimes under hypnosis). I will refer to this collectively as the “UFO phenomenon”. The second premise might get some pushback from believers, but I think is completely reasonable – there is no smoking gun unequivocal evidence that aliens are visiting or have visited the Earth. If there were, there would be no debate. You can still believe that the evidence favors the conclusion that we are being visited, that at least some of the UFO phenomena is produced by actual aliens, while accepting the premise that there is no undeniable proof.
If you accept these two premises – there is a UFO phenomenon in the absence if iron-clad proof – then we can talk about competing hypotheses to explain these premises. There are two main contenders. The first is what I have called the “psychocultural” hypothesis. This contends that all UFO phenomena are a mix of misidentified natural or terrestrial phenomena, the many mechanisms of self-deception, cultural belief, delusion, and opportunism. The second is the alien hypothesis, that at least some UFO phenomena are alien craft, encounters with aliens, crashed saucers, or alien experiments. There are other hypotheses (the tongue-in-cheek psychic bigfeet from the future), but they are fringe enough that we can ignore them for now, and in fact I feel they can be subsumed in this debate under the alien hypothesis.
Scientists, and certainly skeptics, have long maintained that the burden of proof lies heavily with the alien hypothesis. Does Michio have a point that this burden of proof has now shifted? I think the answer is a clear no. This burden of proof is based largely on Occam’s razor – when there are competing hypotheses, the one that introduces the fewest new assumptions should be preferred. I would state it more precisely as – the hypothesis that has the lightest assumption burden. This combines both the number of required assumptions and how big or unlikely those assumptions are. The alien hypothesis has the burden of a massive assumption, that aliens are visiting the Earth. The psychocultural hypothesis, on the other hand, has a very light assumption burden. It is built out of mostly entirely known and fairly well understood psychological phenomena. We really don’t have to invent anything new, just extend our understanding of the frailty of human perception, memory, and belief.
We can compare these two hypotheses in other ways... (MORE - details)
