Episode 62: Aliens!?!?
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Transcript
[00:00:10] Blue: Welcome to the Theory of Anything podcast. Hey, guys. Hello.
[00:00:15] Red: Hi, Bruce. Hi, Tracy. We’ve got Tracy here today. I almost said cameo. Sorry.
[00:00:22] Blue: So it’s been a little while since we had Tracy on the show, but we’re going to talk about a fun subject today. In the news, there’s been quite a number of stories about UFOs. And this has been going on for a little while ever since, I don’t know, a year or two ago. The New York Times did a story on UFO sightings and on the government releasing information, their information on UFOs and declassifying it. Ever since then, it’s been way easier to talk about UFOs and not sound like a nutcase. And we’re starting to see a lot of interesting stories coming out. I’m afraid I just don’t buy the alien hypothesis. So we’ll talk about why I don’t. And if you’re listening to the show and you do, that’s OK. This is this is definitely an area where it’s OK to have a difference of opinion. But let’s talk about kind of what’s going on with these stories, why it’s changed the way we talk about UFOs and also about life elsewhere in the universe. And really, I think that these stories, even though I don’t think they’re likely to be have aliens behind them, I think that’s been really good to remove a social barrier to talk about these sorts of things so that we can actually put theories out there and criticize them, which is what we want. So I guess, first of all, Peter and Tracy, how much have you followed this in the news? Or am I the only geek that follows this in the news? I have to know that.
[00:01:59] Red: Well, let me say I’ve been down rabbit holes before with some of this stuff. I’ve seen some of the footage. Haven’t really kept up with too much lately. But I will say that big picture. I’m somewhat similar to you in that. I just, I don’t know. But the darn the ass detector just just really I can’t. I just just don’t believe it. Although, you know, like you, I am. I do feel that it should be openly talked about. I don’t think people who are into aliens are crazy or anything. I mean, I’m very happy to. Oh, fair enough. Very, very happy to talk. I do have a quite a strange view on aliens in general. And I think maybe this has been somewhat influenced by some of Brett Hall’s stuff on this and David Deutsch, too, in that I think that if aliens were to visit us by far, the most plausible scenario is that they would try to help us. And I don’t think they would have any reason to try to stay secret from us or or enslave us or experiment. I don’t know. I don’t know what all of all of these scenarios that people have for why we should why aliens would not want us to know about them or none of them make any sense to me. Far more likely is that they would would identify themselves as we’re from this distant galaxy and we’re here to help you solve death and figure out the world. And so I just it just doesn’t seem big picture. It just doesn’t seem plausible to me that these things, these creatures are going to keep themselves secret from us.
[00:04:07] Red: I think they would probably recognize humans as fellow creators of knowledge and and want to help us. But, you know, I’ve had through conversations with other people. I’ve realized no one quite few not very many other people see it that way. So yeah, that’s the case I’m going to make, though.
[00:04:27] Blue: Yeah. Have you read by by any chance have either of you read the three body problem in that series? No. By the way, excellent series. Cameo recommended it to me and I’m very glad she did. It was it’s Chinese. It’s been translated into English, but it’s this super popular science fiction series that came out of China that’s really caught on over here. Like Obama talked about the series at one point and how much he enjoyed it and things like that. We’re talking about a book here. It’s a it’s a series of books. Yeah. And although it’s supposedly being turned into TV show or something, it has something called the Dark Forest Theory, which is the super pessimistic theory that the reason why you never hear from aliens is because they’re all worried they’re going to be killed by other aliens. I don’t agree with that. And the whole book is based on that pessimistic theory. And so if you can see past that, it’s actually quite an interesting book. But in fact, I think one of the books is called the Dark Forest.
[00:05:30] Red: So the Dark Forest Theory, as I understand it, it’s to explain why we don’t see. It’s sort of to explain the Fermi paradox. That’s right. Why we don’t see any evidence in the universe of alien life. And, you know, one in when the universe is so old and it’s so big. I mean, it just stands to reason that there would be other intelligent life out there so that the the the the Dark Forest Theory attempts to explain that by saying that it’s because the aliens want to they don’t want to be found.
[00:06:07] Blue: That’s right. They’re they’re afraid of being found.
[00:06:10] Red: Yeah, pessimistic interpretation. Yeah, that’s the opposite of what I believe. But so
[00:06:16] Blue: let’s talk about what’s happened kind of in the news recently. So the thing that’s really probably been the biggest deal we’ve this has been coming for a while, like there have been a number of news stories. David Fervor, who’s a. I think Air Force or no Navy, sorry, a decorated individual who went on Lex Friedman’s podcast and talked about seeing UFOs. And he on that podcast, he’s a totally believable witness, right? Like, this is not a guy who’s the slightest bit crazy, right? And he just says outright, I have no doubt it’s aliens. That’s part of the interview. And so he’s actually was in a plane and he actually saw a UFO and there was something underneath the water and it moved way faster than his super advanced plane. And I mean, like, you have to actually go listen to the interview to get the full effect, right? So like, we’ve been having these stories for a while. The government started releasing videos of UFO sightings that they’ve been keeping that are no longer classified. I have to admit now that they’ve released it as it’s no longer classified. I can’t understand why it was ever classified to begin with. And it’s really strange that it ever was. And it’s maybe if nothing else, it tells you something about the government, right, is that they overclassified things.
[00:07:35] Red: They’re always so grainy and in black and white, though. I mean, with HD cameras everywhere,
[00:07:40] Green: it’s never high death. Exactly.
[00:07:45] Blue: So let me give my own background on this. So the story that’s happened recently before I give my own background was the David Gresh story. So the debrief is a legitimate news outlet, albeit a smaller one that did an article called intelligence officials say U.S. has retrieved craft on non of non human origins. And the the News Nation did interviews with David Gresh. And then, like all the mainstream newspapers, then eventually released stories based on this. Apparently, they did try to take this story first to the to the New York Times, and they didn’t accept it, or at least they didn’t accept it in time. I think the way the story gets told is that they were trying to confirm sources and it was taking too long. So he took it to the two journalists that did the story, the debrief. One of them was the one who had done it for the New York Times. So she’s apparently written for the New York Times also to have this government official, who’s part of a task force meant to investigate UFOs to have him with the government’s permission go out and. Basically, say, yes, there are there’s a group within the government that is hiding UFOs and they have non human crafts. That is kind of a big deal. Like, I don’t believe aliens is the is what’s behind this. And I’ll talk about why I don’t believe that. But I think it would be a mistake not to see this as a totally legitimate news story that something is going on that is worth investigating. And so from that standpoint, I actually think that this was a super interesting news story. And Mick West has done some criticisms of it.
[00:09:30] Blue: But he kind of agrees with me. He says, you know, you’re right, this is an interesting story. And I’m really glad that we’ve got this out there. And now I hope we will investigate it. And I don’t think we’re going to find aliens behind it. But I think that it would be really interesting to find out why we keep hearing stories about aliens and to get to the bottom of what’s going on.
[00:09:49] Red: So the claim is beyond it’s beyond just seeing something weird. This is that the government has alien spacecrafts that they’ve acquired and they’re studying and all that. OK. Yes.
[00:10:03] Blue: So as one person on your Facebook page put Peter in response to me posting this article, he said, well, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I guess that while I don’t believe it’s aliens, you’re right, that this is an interesting story. There’s something going on. Let’s go find out what it is. So let me just start with that. Now, let me give my own background. I would really love for this to be aliens like like I cannot tell you when I was a boy and you can ask my mom about this or any of my siblings. I would bring home from the library books on big foot and Loch Ness Monster and aliens. And I was really into cryptid’s. I didn’t even know that term back then, I don’t know if it existed back then. But what we would call cryptid’s today. I have a son who was into that when he was the same age. Cryptid. What are you saying? Cryptid’s. Yeah. They’re animals that like big foot that aren’t known to exist, but that you’re hearing about cryptid’s
[00:11:02] Red: cryptid’s
[00:11:03] Blue: cryptid’s
[00:11:03] Red: with
[00:11:03] Blue: crypt.
[00:11:04] Red: OK, like cryptography. Yeah. OK, OK.
[00:11:08] Blue: So he’s secret or hidden is the root.
[00:11:11] Red: I got it.
[00:11:12] Blue: So and I used to bring home books on UFOs and I really wanted to believe in these. And there I still have my inner boy who just really badly, really, really badly wants it to turn out that David Gress is right and that the government is hiding alien spacecrafts. And I just want that to come out. I want to find out what the hey, we actually do have aliens. And we’ve come across these alien spacecrafts. We’ve got proof of it. And I also want them to find out that actually big foot’s real and that the Loch Ness Monster is real. And I’m just dying for one of these stories to eventually turn out to be true. I don’t actually believe it’s going to happen, but I really, really want it badly. So that’s so this is not a critical, proper critical rationalist attitude, then. No, not even close. You know, what is the proper critical rationalist attitude? So Mick West, he did. He has a YouTube channel and he was interviewed by News Nation to represent the other point of view. And he does he has a very good critical rationalist attitude. I don’t know if he knows what that term means, but there’s a lot of good critical rationalists out there that have never heard of critical rationalism. They’re called scientists. Oh, sure. Sure. And he does a really great job of kind of explaining that there’s that there’s no particular reason to go to the alien hypothesis to try to explain what we’re seeing. So, for example, David Grush, he’s totally believable. Let me just say the guy is totally believable. I do not believe he’s lying. I do not believe that he is in any way trying to make himself famous.
[00:12:58] Blue: I think the reason why he’s doing what he’s doing is because he very sincerely believes that he has enough evidence to show that there are aliens. Keep in mind, his story isn’t that the government, like from the top levels, is hiding aliens, but rather there is a group within the government or within the military that is hiding these aliens from the rest of the government. So like your senators and the president don’t know about it, right? And he has put in a whistleblowers. I forget what those are called, but you put in something saying, you know, I there’s this illegal activity going on and I’m blowing the whistle on it. And that’s what he actually did is he put in this this warning for whistleblowers, but the government now has to go actually investigate. Now, there’s a group within the government that investigates these things. And he was actually part of a committee that investigated these things. So it’s not like the government doesn’t investigate this. Keep in mind, government’s not a single entity, right? The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing. So it makes sense that the government would have a group that tries to investigate our UFOs real. And is there someone in the government that’s hiding information on this, right?
[00:14:08] Red: But, you know, it’s my initial thought is this seems to have the same problem as every other conspiracy theory and that there would just be too many people who would have to know about it. I mean, people aren’t that good at keeping secrets like this. I mean, can you imagine having firsthand evidence that aliens exist and being like, you know, I’m not going to tell my wife. I’m not going to tell my kids. I’m just I’m just going to keep this to myself. I just so that’s actually what happened.
[00:14:39] Blue: OK, so so he was on this committee to according to his story. He was on this committee to investigate UFOs. And it was known he was on the committee and people kept coming to him. People that he trusted, people within the government that he didn’t think had any reason to lie. And they would say, I’ve been on a secret Black Ops group and I’ve seen aliens, alien crafts and I’ve seen alien bodies. OK, and they had these stories to tell him that they claim to have firsthand seen. So in fact, if it was a conspiracy, it didn’t hold, right? Because he’s getting it directly from people who were supposed to be part of the conspiracy. There. OK, so and he kept having these stories. And what seems to have happened is is he became convinced of it at some point. Now, he has not himself seen any of the evidence. And this is really kind of a big deal. OK, and it’s really why I put so little stock in this story as being aliens behind it. So he hasn’t seen any of the crafts himself. He hasn’t seen any of the alien bodies. Anything that we would consider hard evidence that would really. Kind of force us to start accepting aliens is the best theory. He’s seen none of it. He’s interviewed people who have claimed to have seen it. OK. And no, multiple people. Now, he also claims he has some evidence, but that it’s still classified. And so he claims he gave this evidence. But we in the public have not seen that evidence, whatever it is. We know it’s not a craft. We know it’s not an alien body. It’s what he means by evidence we’re not sure.
[00:16:25] Blue: You know, it may be an analysis or we’re really unsure, right? And it’s like, let’s say it was one of the things that it might be that’s been speculated based on some things he said, is that it’s like an analysis of elements that they have this craft and they did an analysis and it wasn’t from this earth. OK. The problem with that is is that he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t be a good enough scientist on his own. We wouldn’t expect him to be to actually know the difference between, say, a strange. Elemental makeup from a foreign government and one from aliens. So it’s it’s unclear how if that’s what he means by evidence, it’s unclear that it is in any way evidence for aliens. Now, let’s talk about what I just said, because some people might actually challenge me on it. The idea that there could be evidence for a theory isn’t evidence only to refute a theory under critical rationalism. Well, probably by the time this episode comes out, we’ll have released my episode on corroboration, where I challenge the idea that we have to take every single thing and turn it into a negative, negativist sentence. I don’t think that’s necessary. I think that when we’re talking about theories, we’re only talking about the theories we currently know about. So it’s always a finite number of theories and that the phrase evidence for this theory really can just be understood as this theory made a prediction. It would create this observation and that observation would be a problem for every single other theory that we currently know about. And I think that that is a rough we can just use the term evidence for this theory and understand it in that way.
[00:18:09] Blue: And I think it becomes awkward to try to change everything into a negativist. Well, it would refute this theory, you know. And really, you’re always just you’re typically just dealing with a very finite number of theories, often just to like it’s really common that you’ve only got two theories. In this case, either aliens is behind it or not. There could be multiple theories as to what it is if it’s not aliens. But in a lot of ways, we only care about the two rough theories, aliens or not.
[00:18:35] Red: I think that’s an excellent summary of the your your three hour or three hours on corroboration, but for more info, refer to the corroboration episode.
[00:18:48] Blue: I’m going to go ahead and continue to use terms like that. For one thing, I’ve got problems with the paparian war on words, right? I do not want paparians to continue down the path of attacking people for the way they worded things as if that somehow means something rather than charitably reading that person as having said something meaningful. So I’m going to, if nothing else, I find it awkward to talk in pure negativist terms and I don’t really know anyone that does do it. Like if you look at the people who attack and someone for saying evidence for, they still themselves use all sorts of terms and phrases that would have the exact same problems like you just can’t you just can’t get away from it, right? So there’s no point attacking somebody else for it if you’re going to do it yourself, right? Yeah. So anyhow, I think we should just get past that, right? It’s if there’s a question as to what I meant by evidence for ask me and I’m always going to say, well, there’s only certain theories on the table and this is against that theory and it was predicted by that theory. And therefore, that’s what I mean by evidence for and that’s fine. That fits perfectly with critical rationalism. There shouldn’t be any issue with me explaining to you. That’s what I mean. OK, so what do I mean by evidence for then strong evidence for weak evidence for? I would say that the very fact that there are these observations that people are coming forward, that is David Grush sees that as evidence for aliens and in a certain sense it is, right? It’s it’s a problem for the theory that there are not aliens.
[00:20:21] Blue: But it’s not much of a problem for the theory that there are not aliens. And therein lies the problem with what he’s saying, right? Is could we explain that set of observations from within the framework of not believing that aliens have landed on Earth? Yeah, we could. It’s really not that hard, unfortunately. When I say, unfortunately, that’s my inner kid talking, because I really want there to be aliens.
[00:20:45] Red: Yeah, so you know how I kind of look at it with so many people in the world. So many weird people. We might be some of them. So many adults with an inner eight year old boys or whatever. It would be kind of weird if there wasn’t. Evidence for for aliens. Right. I mean, there’s there’s people are make all kinds of outrageous claims about all kinds of things. Of course, there’s going to be these claims in the world. And some of them are going to seem believable. Right.
[00:21:19] Blue: You know, let me take an aside on that just for a second. So I suffer from something called sleep paralysis. Are you guys familiar with sleep paralysis?
[00:21:27] Green: Yes.
[00:21:28] Blue: Have either of you suffered from sleep paralysis ever?
[00:21:31] Green: Have you, Tracy?
[00:21:32] Blue: Mm hmm. So tell us about sleep paralysis, Tracy.
[00:21:36] Green: So sleep paralysis for me, when it happens, it’s your your way there. It’s your wake, but you can’t move your body. You can’t open your eyes. You can’t twitch. You can’t do anything. It’s very claustrophobic. It’s very disconcerting. And have you hallucinated when you’re in? Um, I feel like I’ve actually had a couple of times hallucinating. I remember once when I was younger, having that feeling that I couldn’t move. And it sounds crazy. I don’t think that it was really real. But the sensation of I did kind of have a vision where it seemed like this dark, shadowy figure was coming towards me and was trying to like, like, yeah. Yeah, it’s not nice.
[00:22:24] Blue: The dark shadowy figure, I’ve seen them. Yeah, they’re extremely common with sleep paralysis. Um, so there are many people who have sleep paralysis, who believe that the dark shadowy figures are what cause sleep paralysis to them. They they’re seeing demons or ghosts or something, right? Right. So let me explain. Um, when you’re when you’re in a natural state of sleep, you start. A lot of people don’t know this, but REM sleep where you dream is actually the lightest stage of sleep to be stage one. You go from stage one down to stage four and then you kind of naturally come back up and then you go down again. There’s kind of a natural sine wave. Then it gets lighter over time. And so at the end of the night, you start spending more time in the REM state and where you’re having dreams and then you wake up finally. OK, so keep in mind that dreaming is this weird state where you’re partially conscious and partially not, right? You’re still asleep, but you’re seeing things. And your brain’s not functioning quite right. It’s like you’re insane. Things make sense, they shouldn’t and stuff like that. It’s actually a kind of madness. Like everybody has experienced dreams, so you know what it’s like to be mad, right, insane, right? And then your brain removes the dreams, not always. It doesn’t do it perfectly. But that’s why you tend to not remember your dreams. That doesn’t happen if you get waken up in the middle of the dream, which is why if you wake up from a nightmare, you tend to remember it. Your brain doesn’t do the erasal it’s supposed to do. Apparently erasing the dream was a survival thing from evolutionary standpoint.
[00:24:05] Blue: Confusing dreams in reality, like a certain friend of ours, Tracey, used to do. Yes, is a bad thing. It’s not a good survival tactic, right? And so over time, we’ve developed this ability to have our memories of our dreams removed. And it doesn’t happen right away. It actually happens after you wake up in a few minutes afterwards. It starts to get erased. And if you like, go right if you go right it down really quick, it moves it to a different part of the brain that doesn’t get erased. And that’s why taking writing a dream journal allows you to remember your dreams, whereas if you don’t write it down and actually try that for a while, I would write down my dreams. I remember all my dreams for a while and then I kind of got tired of it and I stopped keeping the journal and for the most part, the dreams are just so weird. I don’t want to remember them anyhow. Right. A lot of people have coherent dreams. My wife has very coherent dreams, like mine is so incoherent. I mean, so to keep your body from moving while you’re dreaming and you’re almost awake, your body locks up. Right. And that’s so sleep paralysis would be where you start to come out of the dream state and you’re starting to you make like your eyes are partially open and so you’re starting to see your room and but you’re still dreaming and so you have this intermix of what you’re seeing in reality and what you’re seeing in the dream. And I have I have been let me tell you some of some of my hallucinations in sleep paralysis.
[00:25:39] Blue: I’ve had a ghost grab my bed and move it up and down. It’s terrifying, by the way. Yeah, it is terrifying when you’re in it. I had a ghost wandering around downstairs, stomping around, haunting my house. I once had a demon with red eyes standing on top of my bed. The shadowy figure that you described looking down at me. I actually attacked it because I believed it was really there. And it brought me out of it brought me out of the dream state. And the sleep paralysis finally broke. And it always disappears immediately as soon as the sleep paralysis breaks. Because you wake up all the way. Right. I also once had a roommate. We were like sleeping on the ground or something. I can’t remember exactly why we were doing that. But we were like sleeping on the ground. And I in the sleep paralysis, he kept shoving me. And he was like he was like in my face shoving me like trying to wake me up or something and then I would come out of the sleep paralysis. And suddenly I would see that he hadn’t been shoving me. He’s like way across the room and he’s just sleeping on the ground. And I can see him there. So I had all sorts of really ghostly otherworldly experiences. I don’t believe any of them are explainable as actual demons or ghosts or something like that. And one of the reasons why, first of all, I just don’t think that way. I’m a scientist at heart, so I don’t try to explain these things through the supernatural. But part of it is that they always disappear immediately like the bed shaking.
[00:27:16] Blue: And I know if I can make my arm move, the bed will stop shaking because the dream will stop. And I have I’m thinking that in the state of paralysis. So I’ll go, OK, move my arm so I can stop being scared by this ghost. You know, and then I move my arm and boom, everything stops, right? And so I know it’s directly connected to this dream state that’s going on. And I think that that’s a very good scientific explanation. And I don’t need to reference the supernatural. But I can totally see why someone who wasn’t, you know, scientifically skeptical as me would have these experiences. And to them, they’ve effectively seen a demon or a ghost or have been haunted. And in fact, a lot of famous haunting like famous haunted house. One of the things they discovered is there’s a reason why it’s always an older house. It’s because the older houses have bad heating systems that put off carbon monoxide, which tends to create sleep paralysis. And what they found is if you if you take a haunted house, yeah, yikes, you take a haunted house and you go and you change and upgrade the heater, the house will stop being haunted. That’s really interesting. I believe that. Yeah. So this is this is what I’m trying to get out here is that there are real phenomena that are weird and hard to explain. I mean, imagine trying to explain sleep paralysis before we knew what it was, right? I mean, most of human history, if someone had sleep paralysis for all intents and purposes, it was a supernatural experience. They had seen a demon, right?
[00:29:02] Blue: Now, I I’m not sure I can explain to you why the shadowy figure is so common with the process, right? It’s very weird. Now, one of the things is is that if you happen to believe in aliens when you have sleep paralysis, you will have the hallucination that the shadowy figure is an alien and that the alien is operating on you. And that’s where a lot of the stories of aliens abducting you and then operating on you come from is from sleep paralysis. OK, if that’s kind of in your brain, that that’s a possibility. You’re going to experience it that way. And these these things, they feel very real, right? I mean, like when you’re still in the sleep state, so your brain’s not quite functioning right. It really, really feels like it’s really happening to you. And I’ve long said that I think experiential things like this, they kind of do trump a scientific attitude. Like if I have a certain scientific attitude towards Bigfoot, OK? I call this the Bigfoot principle. I, you know, if I were to I don’t think there’s a Bigfoot, I don’t think there’s a real Bigfoot. I do actually think there could be a real animal behind Bigfoot. Let me get to that in a second. But in terms of there being a real Bigfoot in the sense of a half ape, half man, kind of the popular image of Bigfoot from like Harry and the Henderson’s. No, I don’t believe that that’s a real animal. And one of the reasons why is because an animal that large would have an awful lot of poop like this is well known in scientific circles. And it wouldn’t be that hard to track them down.
[00:30:46] Blue: And and so the fact that you can’t do that if you see these feet, but you don’t see the massive amounts of feces that should be coming from an animal that size, you know, it just doesn’t fit, right? It’s not a very good explanation. It’s easier to explain Bigfoot in terms of it’s a hoax that got started. Or there may be an animal behind some of the sightings, but it’s not actually what we would think of as Bigfoot. Now, here’s the thing, though, if I were out wandering in the woods and suddenly the Bigfoot attacked me and I’m on the ground and it’s roaring in my face and I can smell its breath and I can see the fur, right? I’m not going to be start thinking, oh, this must be hallucination because of the poop theory. Right.
[00:31:29] Green: I’m not. Right.
[00:31:31] Blue: At this point, I’m going to be at best. I’m going to be thinking, wow, there really is a Bigfoot. And I wonder what he does with his poop so that people aren’t finding it. I mean, it would totally change my attitude towards that theory. Right. And so I do think it’s experiential. This will trump a scientific attitude and maybe rightly so. Right. If I really did see Bigfoot roaring in my face, I’m going to start being a Bigfoot believer, period, end of story. Right. And then really, I’m going to start using my scientific attitude towards trying to figure out how come he hasn’t been discovered. And it’s going to shift the way I look at it. Now, because of that, it’s somewhat understandable that a person who suffers from sleep paralysis might assign way too much to see that as too as evidence for the theory that there’s actually aliens or demons or whatever. And they to them, it’s this really happened to them, right? And so it’s really hard for them to overcome that experiential attitude. And again, maybe even rightly so. But I don’t think it transfers in the slightest, right? If I’ve seen Bigfoot and it’s roaring in my face, so I quote, no, Bigfoot exists. OK. Me telling Tracy that does not count as evidence for Tracy. Right. It doesn’t. Right. It doesn’t. It’s a completely nontransferable kind of evidence, which is why we entirely excluded from science because science requires repeatable observations. That’s part of the nature of the scientific method, as we as we call it. I know Popper said it wasn’t a method. I kind of disagree with him on that.
[00:33:10] Blue: I think it’s more a method of critical how we criticize things than a method of how we come up with theories, if that makes any sense. And but I think that. It makes sense that we do not count the experiential as evidence in science, even if you as an individual may count it for something. And you could be mistaken, which I think you are in the case of sleep paralysis. I think in the case of sleep paralysis, we understand enough about that theory at this point that that explains why you, when you keep having sleep paralysis, see aliens abducting you, right? You are hallucinating. And like I said, I’ve been able to test that theory, right? The fact that I can move my arm and I can make the ghost disappear or I to me, that’s a pretty testable circumstance, which is why I don’t buy it, right? I think it’s just an hallucination period and a story.
[00:34:06] Red: I think it’s pretty common for for people, even seemingly rational, scientifically minded people that they’ll always have that one thing, whether it’s the the haunted house or they took a drug like like DMT when talked to elves or something, you know, elves, right? That’s pretty, that’s actually pretty common that I mean, I would be too afraid to do something like
[00:34:33] Blue: that,
[00:34:33] Red: but that people will actually do do do that and have have conversations with spirit entities and things. And yeah, I think it’s very common for people to have these kinds of beliefs. Yes.
[00:34:48] Blue: And you
[00:34:49] Red: know what?
[00:34:49] Blue: That’s
[00:34:50] Red: not a
[00:34:50] Blue: bad thing, right? I mean, like if if we all just went with the scientific consensus and we didn’t let what our eyes showed us change our mind, you would lose a giant source of conjecture, right? A really useful source of improving theories because sometimes they’re real, right? Maybe not most of the time, but like, I mean, I could imagine like a platypus before they discovered the I don’t know when the platypus was discovered or whatever, but you could imagine some time in the past where there is this myth about a weird kind of mammal that laid eggs. And everyone would think that you were crazy, right? And it has a duck bill, you know, like it really sounds crazy, right? It really does. It sounds like a cryptic crawling duck, right? Except that it happens to be real, right? And so without the ability for someone to go experience something and then say, OK, I believe in this and now I’m going to go use the scientific method to try to convince people that I’m right. You know, I think you really would lose a really important source of conjecture and criticism. So on the one hand, I’m completely in favor of saying that as an institution, science does not accept individual experiences, they must be repeatable. I think that’s completely the right rule. But I also completely accept that you as an individual scientist get to ignore that rule if you’ve seen Bigfoot, right? And that’s the way this works. And I’m glad for that. There’s a scientist who Jeffrey Meldrum in Idaho that studies Bigfoot as one of his main interests, and he takes a lot of flack for it.
[00:36:30] Blue: But I’m really glad we’ve got a legitimate scientist who’s out there trying to study Bigfoot. I mean, Bigfoot, I don’t think he’s real, but I’m a fallibleist. Who knows, right? I would really like to have somebody out there, you know, at least one scientist doing his best to try to study evidence for and against the existence of Bigfoot and trying to come up with some way to do that. And who knows what he’ll probably come up with nothing. But who knows, right? And I think that’s a really important part of science that you’ve kind of got these outliers like that.
[00:37:02] Red: And science benefits so much from pushing back against these kinds of things. Yes, who really just strength strengthens the institution. That’s where why, as far as I’m concerned, more cranks the better. I mean, I think.
[00:37:19] Blue: OK, so with all that kind of in mind, let’s talk about aliens and these these sightings and things like that. So let’s say so this is this is giving credit to Mick West because he’s the one who said this is what I would have told you, though, even if I hadn’t seen Mick West video, I’ll put in the show notes, a link to the video that I’m talking about here, where he does a very good job of talking about this. He points out that we’ve had the UFO mythos for a while now, right? It it started. I can’t remember when it started, like in the fifties or sixties or something. There’s a book coming out on the first alien abduction that I’ve already preordered because I’m really excited about it. Done by a totally legitimate scholar, right? He’s researching the history of what happened, not trying to argue for against it, right? It’s Barney and Betty Hill incident. Yeah. So it was an American couple who claim they were abducted by extra Trestills in a rural portion of the state of New Hampshire from September 19th to 20th in 1961. I don’t know if that’s technically the first case of UFO abduction, but like it was one of the more early ones that became famous, that then kind of popularized it. And once it starts becoming part of the mythos of the culture, then more people start to experience it, you know, from a for obvious reasons. That makes sense. And so I just bought this book and it’s coming out in August and I’m like super excited about it. And by the way, if I ever do find evidence that there’s aliens, I’m totally going to be pro alien, right?
[00:38:54] Blue: Because I really want my inner boy really wants there to be aliens. Have I mentioned that that my inner boy really wants there to be aliens? Yes. So when these things started to happen, it becomes part of this mythos and stories start to grow up. And then people might remember observations or theory impregnated. So people might start to interpret things in terms of that theory, right? So if I have in my mind that there are alien abductions and I believe in them and then I have sleep paralysis and I see something, an hallucination, I might see it as an alien, right? And experience it as an alien because now I’m I’m kind of primed due to this theory that’s in my head that I believe in to see that as an alien and to observe it as an alien. And again, that makes sense, right? Because observations are theory impregnated. So let’s say that you have a bunch of people working on a craft retrieval program. Now, it’s not aliens, it’s foreign countries. OK, so we do, in fact, have a craft craft craft retrieval program. I don’t know that for sure. I’m just this is my theory makes sense. We would write that seems like a totally believable theory. And so we have these top secret craft retrieval programs where when a craft from a foreign country falls, we go out and we grab it and it’s super high tech compared to stuff that a layman is familiar with because it’s military. And they see things that they’re not used to. And then they have in their mind this this mythos of myth of aliens and they can’t help but read into what they’re seeing. This is an alien craft.
[00:40:48] Blue: Now, it would make sense that they’re not told too much. They’re part of the program, but it’s top secret. So nobody is telling them who this is, why they’re doing it. They just know my job to retrieve this craft and to do these certain things or experiments or whatever, and they are interpreting it as aliens because that’s on their mind the same way someone with sleep paralysis would. OK, that really has the ring of truth. Right. So well, this is a totally believable story because you have such a strong myth of aliens out there and it’s so much a part of the culture. It makes sense that that people are going to be primed to take something that isn’t aliens, but that they can’t explain and then see it as aliens. And you would you would almost expect that to happen. So we would we would expect that within the military, amongst people who have been on top secret programs, that some percentage of them saw it as aliens, even if it wasn’t aliens. And that they would then, knowing this guy, David Grush, who’s super believable, they would go to him and in complete sincerity say, I’ve seen alien crafts.
[00:41:59] Red: And especially with all these new drones and things, you know, my my son bought a bought a drone for twenty dollars on Amazon and I just couldn’t believe how well it works. Flying with precision or just around our house.
[00:42:15] Green: Well,
[00:42:15] Red: maybe it was already, I don’t know. But it was it worked and it takes HD footage and everything. I mean, I can only imagine what the Chinese government has. There’s probably things that we can’t even hardly believe.
[00:42:30] Blue: My sister, the one that has cancer, she’s seen a UFO. And so she saw these lights and they were moving in weird ways and they were forming patterns. And she’s like, what the heck is that? And then she went home, turned on the news and it turned out there was somebody out there creating UFOs with drones. And they knew who it was, right? And she said, you know, I mean, she doesn’t believe in aliens or UFOs, but she says, I could totally see how someone would see this and experience it as aliens, right? They would for all intents and purposes, they’ve now seen a UFO and they’ve seen an alien UFO and they don’t have any other explanation available to them, right? And so I I think that’s the problem is that the alternative theory in this case, which is that it’s just non aliens. I’m not going to be specific as to who it is. It’s the Russians or I don’t know the Brazilians. Who knows, right? But it’s some other entity that’s creating these crafts and that we’re retrieving them and that theory is really quite sufficient to explain the observations of David Grush having people tell him they’ve seen something, right? And so that that theory has not been eliminated. And it’s a much better theory than the alien theory. It fits much better with everything we know, right? It’s a tighter, harder to vary theory. It it fits other best explanations available to us, etc. OK, then then Mick goes on and he points out that there’s various. Things that you would not expect, right? Like these alien crafts, if they’re advanced enough to come across the galaxy to visit us, why are they crashing at all? Right?
[00:44:23] Blue: I mean, what’s the crash rate? How many are here? Right? And how many have we recovered? You know, how their spacecrafts must be way less reliable than the average car. Right? I mean, it doesn’t make sense, right? Now, I I’ve I’ve had people who I’ve talked to who believe in UFOs and think that’s the explanation behind the David Grush story. And they’ve offered kind of ad hoc explanations here. I have this I’ve talked against ad hoc explanations quite a bit. But let me just say that, thank goodness, we do have people out there offering alternative explanations. And ad hoc explanations are totally legitimate as conjectures. They’re not legitimate as scientific explanations. And that’s really the distinction you have to make in mind here. OK. So. One of them said that. I think the idea of of crashes of advanced alien tech being less probable fails to take into account that the crashes, if they did occur, probably would have occurred during interactions between our own military and the said tech. So he’s imagining the crash being because we shot the craft down. There was some sort of engagement that took place. OK. This is a good example of an ad hoc save. Like that’s not part of the story we’ve been told. But we could imagine that we could imagine that eventually evidence will come out that the reason why they’re doing these craft retrievals is because we’ve been shooting down alien hostile alien crafts or something like that.
[00:46:01] Red: Right. I guess that would explain why it didn’t happen so much in the middle ages or something that you have the technology for shooting these crafts down.
[00:46:12] Blue: You know, one of my UFO books as a kid, it actually claimed that there was a UFO in the Bible. And I I can’t remember what the exact sort of
[00:46:23] Green: revelations or something.
[00:46:25] Blue: Yeah, it was like it was it was angels. It really wasn’t very compatible with the UFO mythos. But on the other hand, I suppose the point they were trying to make was is that if UFOs were showing up back in biblical times, they would probably not interpret it as aliens. They would probably interpret it as angels or something like that. Right. So so I mean, I guess fair enough, like if we’re going to go all the way into an an untestable theory like aliens, then maybe we can explain them as they saw him as demons or they saw him as something else. And but we know they’re aliens. By the way, one of the common things is that they’re not actually aliens, but they’re actually interdimensional beings so that they don’t come from somewhere else in the galaxy. They come from a different dimension. That’s like super common amongst UFO believers today. That’s like a giant part of the mythology that exists. So, you know, and honestly, as critical rationalists, we really don’t eliminate non testable theories, right? We just treat them as non testable. So I’m not going to even go out and say, no, there are no aliens. Like if you ask me my opinion, no, these are not caused by aliens. But you know what? I don’t know. Right now, I’m not going to go so far as saying, no, I know it’s false because I can’t know that I’m even going to leave an open mind to it. I’m going to leave open mind to the idea that maybe due to David Grush blowing the whistle on this, that we’re going to research, we’re going to find out and they’re going to come forth with alien craft at some point.
[00:48:02] Blue: And at that point that will falsify the theory that I just explained because it’s a falsifiable theory.
[00:48:09] Red: I really think that’s the right the right attitude. I think that’s why the word fallible list seems like a means true for me more than skeptic, you know, it’s just a better attitude towards life. We should be open to all these weird theories, not necessarily accept them, but listen to them.
[00:48:29] Blue: And yeah, I think that trying to keep an open mind, like a lot of times you’ll hear critical rationalists, Deutschians in particular talk against the idea of beliefs. That’s in my mind going too far, right? Of course, human beings have beliefs. I have this sense of what I think is right in terms of if there’s aliens or not behind this. And that’s my belief, right? And I think and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with the fact that I form a belief and that that is my preferred theory, and it may even be that my preferred theory, the one I believe in, isn’t really the best theory at this time, right? That could happen for whatever reason. Just the way I’m trying to evaluate the critical discussion, I may evaluate it not the best way and I may end up with something that isn’t true and there’s actually a better theory available. Or I just am not familiar with the evidence or what the alternative theories are or because maybe I don’t even want to. It’s confirmation bias, right? But at the end of the day, the fact that I have a belief that it’s not aliens doesn’t mean I’m not open to it being aliens. And I think that’s really the correct critical rationalist attitude. Go ahead, you’re not going to stop yourself. If someone told me I don’t believe in anything, I don’t believe in theories. You know, I just am a total peer critical rationalist. I would call him a liar, right? I mean, there’s no way that humanly they’re able to do that. And I don’t think they should even try not to do that. I think they just just keep an open mind.
[00:50:06] Blue: And we should always just keep an open mind, right? OK, maybe it will be aliens. I will reevaluate that when something more solid comes forth that requires me to falsify to eliminate this theory that I’ve just explained that I think explains the same set of observations as of today, OK? Such as they’re actually being an alien body that comes forth that scientists can see and go start experimenting on or such as they have an actual alien craft. And we have some way of scientists observing it and they all start to say, you know what, I can’t explain this is coming from Earth, right? And that would be that would really force me to rethink this. And I would at that point and I would gladly at that point because I would really prefer its aliens because I have this inner child that I explained my inner child to you. We’ve met him. So I think that is the correct critical rationalist attitude overall towards these stories. They’re fun stories. I think we shouldn’t. You know, poo poo, I think we should enjoy them for what they are. But when it comes right down to it, we really haven’t eliminated the better theory, which is that this is not aliens and that it’s really just other unexplained phenomena that people are interpreting as aliens because that’s part of our culture’s myths at this point. Anyhow, that would be. I guess my overall stance and explanation as to why I don’t yet believe it’s aliens.
[00:51:42] Red: Well, you’ve made it made a heck of a lot of sense. I can’t think your perspective rings true for me. What about my my line of reasoning I brought up at the beginning? I mean, why would these aliens be interested in visiting us? None of the scenarios, more pessimistic scenarios that people have brought up to, you know, make any sense at all, you know, to mine the earth. Well, why would they travel? I mean, there’s elements all over the universe. Why are they going to travel all this distance just to to mine uranium or something like that? They could create their own elements if they have that technology in slave us. Well, that’s preposterous. They can, you know, create a robot or AI or whatever that’s going to do a lot more than than any human could. I mean, what are they? What are they doing? There’s just no there’s no good explanation. You know, I think that the only that what would make a heck of a lot more sense. You know, maybe this is my crazy optimism speaking and, you know, also plays into ideas about morality and and the which I think is is I think objective is is the is the right word that, you know, the the idea that these aliens would that would have technology that would be far beyond us, but then, you know, would have a sense of morality that would be just I guess just completely different than us or or I would say inferior to us. I mean, if they’re not if they’re coming to earth and they see these creatures, these fellow creatures capable of science and explanation and
[00:53:45] Red: reason and not wanting to help these these creatures cure cancer and cure death and and and live better lives, then I would say that would be highly immoral. I guess. And so it just it just doesn’t make make sense to me. I, you know, I think if the if they came, like I said, they would want to help us.
[00:54:11] Blue: So, you know, in the in the episode when we talked about AGI alignment and safety, I introduced the idea of speculations being easy to vary and I need to do an episode on easy to varyness because I really feel like my attitude, my understanding of it has changed a lot in the last year or so. And I feel like the concept is somewhat ambiguous and that it leads to some problems, even though I think it’s getting at something that’s correct. But I think that when we’re dealing with the easy to vary part of an explanation, you can kind of make up whatever you want. So I’m sure that someone who believed in aliens would would respond to you by saying, oh, well, you know, maybe they’re hostile, we were hostile when we first encountered other people or, you know, maybe they they’re like Star Trek. You know, they they have this prime directive that we’re not ready to know about them and they’re actually behind the scenes. They are helping us. And I think that’s the problem, right? Is that we can take these sorts of explanations. Well, why wouldn’t they help us? Which I think is like a really good question, right? That’s what I think we would actually do. At least at our current level of enlightenment. If you went 100 years ago, sure, we wouldn’t have done that. But at this point, it’s hard to imagine if we went out and discovered aliens that we would try to conquer them like, like why? Right? It just it’s just not a part of the way we think anymore. Right. So I totally agree with what you’re saying.
[00:55:48] Blue: But I do think we’re in the easy to vary part of an easy to vary explanation. And it’s it’s pretty easy to just come up with, well, it might be this or it might be that. And because of that, it’s hard to make any argument at all along those lines. That’s why I kind of instead go with. Look, I’m going to reassess my theory the moment I actually see the craft or other scientists, scientists see the craft, right? Is that point I’m going to have a totally different opinion. But I think you’re right, right? To me, it makes so little sense that if they came all the way across the galaxy to spy on us that they wouldn’t just announce themselves. It’s it’s like we would, right? It’s yeah, it kind of makes sense.
[00:56:40] Red: And you look at the history of our own technological development that it does kind of seem like morality has improved alongside techno, you know, as soon as the enlightenment, the the spark or whatever kind of kind of started in our our our technological growth started to skyrocket. Well, you know, suddenly you kind of figure out, well, maybe slavery is not such a good thing, maybe women should be equal, more equal to men. And you know, all this all this moral growth seems to go along with technological growth,
[00:57:18] Blue: looking
[00:57:18] Red: at our own history. I mean, they don’t seem unrelated. So, you know, if anything, I would just think the suspect, the aliens and AGI, too. You can make a parallel argument with with AGI with all this. You know, they’re probably, if anything, you know, people always think about them being less moral than us or at least differently moral, to be fair. I think a more more implausible idea is that if we create AGI, they’re going to be more moral than us. They’re going to be able to look at look at the or or equally equally or more, I would say, let me
[00:57:53] Blue: clarify, you’re not just talking about AGI. You’re actually talking about super intelligences that right. The argument you’re using is about it’s not just an AGI, but it’s actually better at thinking than a human being is. Then it would make sense. So goes the argument that it should create knowledge faster, including moral or that’s that’s a
[00:58:12] Red: good distinction. Yeah, super intelligence. Yeah,
[00:58:14] Blue: because an AGI doesn’t have to be a super intelligence.
[00:58:17] Red: OK, don’t you think it would be, though, most likely?
[00:58:20] Blue: You know what, I I don’t I don’t have any reason to believe that. Like at all. OK, fair enough, right?
[00:58:26] Red: Yeah,
[00:58:26] Blue: let’s talk about that for a second, because I think this is something that a lot of people have missed. OK. There is kind of an assumption that silicon is faster than neurons. Therefore, if we create an AGI, it’s going to be faster at thinking than us. OK, but the architecture we have of our current computers has a typically a single processor or a processor with four cores or maybe at most, you know, a specialized set of processors is a whole bunch of them doing graphics or something like that, right? And consider consider how that’s different than the brain where every single neuron is both memory and a processor. Like it’s a totally different architecture. They’re not even similar architectures, right? And it’s massively parallel processed because of that well beyond anything that we’ve ever been able to create at this point. So, yes, the individual neuron is slower, a lot slower than if you’re trying to just look at a CPU and how fast it processes. OK. Now, so you might say, well, what if we made a computer that had as many processors as neurons? Wouldn’t it be like way faster than the brain? Well, yes, but it would also probably be like a little sun and melt, right? Because it would have so much heat. So when you try to look at these architectures, you have to compare the brain’s architecture in terms of being massively parallel processed with almost no heat, right? I mean, like it’s totally ingenious compared to anything we’ve ever engineered, right? And so when you actually try to do a true comparison between them, I don’t think we even know which is faster, right? That’s an excellent point.
[01:00:08] Red: I’ve never heard it quite like that, but that that makes a lot of sense.
[01:00:12] Blue: So I think we have as much reason to believe that the first AGI will be stupider than us as we do to believe it will be smarter than us, which is to say no reason at all. Right. We just don’t understand it well enough to be making these sorts of speculations. So again, I’m not dismissing the possibility that they might be faster than us, even when we first create them even at the current level of technology, but I don’t think we’ve got any reason to believe that yet. A better question might be, could we eventually make something that thinks faster than us? I think the answer to that is yes, right? And so so maybe the concept of a super intelligence in this sort of limited sense, because it’s I would question whether it faster is the same as a super intelligence, but maybe in this limited sense of simply being faster, maybe we eventually need to worry about that. But I don’t even I don’t even think we’ve got good reason to believe it’s currently on the table as a possibility, right? Until we actually understand what the AGI algorithm is and understand how the brain implements it, I don’t think we’re even going to be able to make good estimates. So at this point, I would just leave it an open question, right? I wouldn’t deny the possibility and so maybe be a little worried about it. But but I just think it’s the idea it’s more probable. I think that that makes a whole series of assumptions that I think we could easily find out is false, right? So anyhow, that’s my opinion on that subject. I don’t think I’ve ever expressed that.
[01:01:39] Red: No, that’s very compelling. I hadn’t hadn’t heard it quite put like that.
[01:01:44] Blue: So this is what I mean by the easy to very portion of the explanation, right? I mean, like intelligence is a vague theory at this point. And people who have AGI safety concerns, first of all, I I feel like the Deutschians in particular have a very bad attitude towards people who have AGI safety concerns, AGI safety concerns are a legitimate concern. The correct way to answer it isn’t to poo poo it. The correct way to answer it is to point out you’re just making lots of wild guesses and I could easily make alternative guesses that would be the opposite of whatever program you come up with, right? So at this point, we just don’t know know enough to even if we do need an AGI safety program, and I’m not ruling that possibility out at all. The gene, our genes have an AGI safety program on us. So it’s not unthinkable that we’ll need to have one on the AGI. OK, and we don’t always hate it like we tend to hate pain. So we do sometimes hate it. But like if you were to remove, you know, somebody’s sex drive, which is part of the genes, a general intelligence safety program on us to keep us aligned with our genes, we don’t like it, right? We prefer to have the safety program in that case. So I don’t even know that it’s true that AGI’s will hate us putting a safety program on it, right? I don’t know enough to ask that question yet.
[01:03:05] Blue: And that’s my point is that getting worried about it when we don’t even have a good theory to work with to tell us what we need a safety program for or what it should look like, you’re basically making a wild guess that could be the exact opposite of what makes sense. I think this is the best way to read Deutsch when he talks about, look, if you create a safety program and you actually implemented it, you would have enslaved them. That’s not necessarily true, but it could be true. You should be as worried about that as not having a safety program, right? Because the theory is so nascent at this point that you could easily come up with, even if you could come up with a safety program, which I don’t think you can, because I think it’s going to be based on qualia, which we have no theory of. But let’s say you could. Let’s say you could today come up with a safety program. It might be exactly the wrong thing to do. It might be the worst possible thing you could do because we don’t have a good theory of intelligence yet. So it’s kind of silly to get into the aid to worry about AGI safety, not because the worry is wrong, but because you can’t do anything productive without a better theory. The correct AGI safety program is to study intelligence at this point as much as you can until you understand it well enough that you know if you need a safety program and what it would look like. You can’t answer either of those questions today, so you’re wasting your time thinking about it. That’s my point of view on this.
[01:04:33] Red: Well, that was a compelling digression. I’ll say that.
[01:04:36] Blue: OK, by the way, our AGI safety and alignment episode. That’s basically a summary of that episode. And I guess that is kind of how I feel about a lot of these alien things, too, right, is at this point, let’s say that it was nonhumans behind these crafts. Let’s let’s pretend like that’s actually the truth. I don’t know what you do other than exactly what I already said. Those crap, we need to find out who’s been hiding them in the government. We need to probably punish them. We need to then bring out these crafts, let scientists start to examine them. And then at that point, we can find out if are these hostile aliens? Are they interdimensional beings and not aliens? Are they Bigfoot? You know, is it really actually the Loch Ness monster? I mean, like once we have some sort of hard evidence that allows us to start to narrow the theories that we need to be looking at, at that point, we can start talking about what we should be doing about these aliens. Right. Yeah. Yeah, you know, that’s
[01:05:36] Red: actually you bring up another kind of compelling thing about punishing people in the government for keeping that a secret. You know, I not to get vindictive or anything, but I if you’re a government official, it’s not just like keeping a secret about Russia or something, something secret. You’re keeping something secret that is like fundamental to our understanding of our place in the universe. Like you are depriving knowledge from, you know, life, potentially life altering knowledge from seven billion people. It’s like that is highly immoral. Like I think that’s that’s so wrong. Like if that’s what they are doing, then, you know, geez, I overthrow the government. Really.
[01:06:25] Blue: Well, according to this theory, it’s a secret ops group within the government. It’s not the highest levels of like the president doesn’t know about it. The fair Congress doesn’t. I mean, again, if the president knew about it, if Congress knew about it, it would have leaked out, you know, years ago. Right.
[01:06:41] Red: It’s you know, someone like Trump, though, it’s probably the first thing he does when he gets elected. He’s like, oh, now I’ve got all the secrets. I think he would be going after that. He’s
[01:06:49] Blue: well, he couldn’t he couldn’t keep our regular secrets. I know. So, yeah, I and again, this goes back to the easy bearing as part of the theory. It’s the fact that the even the fact that we have to claim to make this theory work that aliens are behind it is that it’s a secret organization in the government that’s breaking the law and and refusing to let Congress do their regular oversight, right? Literally breaking the law, right? The fact that you even have to go there with this theory is just not a good sign. It’s I really need something more solid than testimony that I can’t have scientists check, right?
[01:07:36] Red: Yeah,
[01:07:36] Blue: it just it just needs to be more before we’re really going to start taking the alien theory seriously.
[01:07:43] Red: So makes a lot of sense. Well, take home image from from this episode. Bigfoot is strangling Bruce on he’s got him on the ground and Bruce says, well,
[01:07:55] Blue: what about the poop? Yeah, this can’t be real, right? So actually, I wanted to mention one of the thing about that. So the opposite side of the Bigfoot principle is like, let’s say that we discovered that there is, in fact, a group of previously unknown apes that live in North America. Here’s my question for you. Have you proven Bigfoot or have you disproven Bigfoot? Stop and think about that for a second.
[01:08:25] Red: Well, I mean, maybe the devil’s in the details there. I mean, does do these things look like what has been seen previously? No, they’re just apes. They’re just like are they do they look? You know, there’s that famous Bigfoot picture that looks like I think they even found the found the monkey suit doesn’t look happy. It’s
[01:08:43] Blue: just an ape, right? It’s a species of ape that we didn’t know existed in North America.
[01:08:48] Red: OK,
[01:08:48] Blue: and it’s apparently been there for for very, very long period of time.
[01:08:52] Red: Well, then I would have to say it does not. You would see it as disproving Bigfoot, disproving. You know, I think I would see it as proving Bigfoot.
[01:09:00] Blue: OK,
[01:09:00] Red: fair enough,
[01:09:01] Blue: because it’s not immediately clear. It depends on what you mean by Bigfoot, right? If you mean the half ape, half man, then yes, it disproves Bigfoot. But to me, that would just be so exciting. I’d go around saying Bigfoot’s real, right?
[01:09:16] Red: I would write that would be.
[01:09:17] Blue: And this is why when people ask me, is the Yeti real? I go, yeah, the Yeti’s real. I just think it’s an orangutan, right? It’s we know that there are orangutans that live in that area, and they are the source of the Yeti myth. So I think the Yeti’s a real thing. I just think it’s an orangutan. So they have these white orangutans that live there or whatever. And that’s just so exciting. It is kind of exciting, right? So and you’re right. And that was the point I was trying to make is that the devil is in the details, right? If Bigfoot, by Bigfoot, you explicitly mean. Half man, half ape, then finding apes would then explain the Bigfoot myth without ever having found the half man, half ape, right? So most people would see it as, oh, that’s what Bigfoot was. We’ve disproven Bigfoot. But I would suggest that Bigfoot could just mean there’s an actual animal there that everybody thinks doesn’t exist and that we suddenly find it does exist. That would be a cryptid, right? That would actually be not maybe not quite as exciting as the full Bigfoot legend being discovered, but it’d be awfully exciting, right? I mean, it would be very, very cool.
[01:10:26] Red: Well, the question is, I wonder what the professor at the University of Idaho or whatever who studies this stuff, would he see that as confirming Bigfoot or not? Or would he say, no, I’m looking at that’s not what I mean.
[01:10:38] Blue: He actually, if I remember correctly, I haven’t read his book. I need to read his book. But if I remember correctly, he actually discovered fur as part of his studies into Bigfoot and sent it in and got it classified as a new kind of ape by looking at its DNA. So, hey, you know, this happens, right? Is that there’s weird stuff comes out and it’s not easy to explain. The world is full of things that are not yet easy to explain. I don’t know what happened there. Was it a mistake or did he actually discover some sort of animal that exists that we didn’t we still don’t really know about? I couldn’t tell you, right? I don’t really believe it’s a half man, half ape, right? I’m not even sure I believe it’s an ape, right? I think maybe a mistake got made. I’m not scientific enough on this to even give you a solid opinion. OK, but that does show. But that’s that’s why I like the fact that we have a scientist that’s actually trying his best to look at evidence like this, right? I think most scientists would not even bother to go try to analyze the DNA for a big of that supposed to be a big foot and find out what it is. So I think we need someone who’s open minded enough to go try to do that and to really kind of challenge us on stuff like this. By the way, now that we’re talking about things that I can’t explain, are you guys familiar with the story in South America somewhere? I
[01:12:03] Blue: want to say Brazil, but it might have been Chile or something where a group of children actually had a UFO land and the aliens came out and talked to them. Are you familiar with the story? It’s a well known story.
[01:12:16] Green: I thought you were going down the Chupacabra for
[01:12:18] Blue: a second. No, no, no.
[01:12:19] Green: I haven’t heard this song.
[01:12:21] Blue: Oh, it’s a true story. Expedition unknown, like the guy who does that series, he actually went and like interviewed them. They’re all adults now. They all swear by it that back when they were kids that as a group, they saw a UFO land and the adults in the building heard the children getting excited and went running out there and it was gone by that point. And the aliens came out and they gave a message of peace to the children. And all of them still remember it to this day. And how do you explain something like that? Like, I don’t know how to mass deletions, right? I don’t know, right? I think there’s a lot of things like that out there that we we actually I would like to know what was behind that. I don’t think it’s aliens, but but I think something happened. I just don’t know what it is. Yeah, right. Well, kind of
[01:13:16] Red: like I said before, I think it would be much weirder if there weren’t a lot of unexplained things out there. I mean, you almost with so many things happening in this world. I mean, of course, there’s a lot of unexplained things.
[01:13:29] Blue: I want it to be aliens that I really do. I want to find out the kids actually met an alien.
[01:13:35] Red: Yeah.
[01:13:36] Blue: All right. Well, we could probably wrap up this episode. This was a fun episode.
[01:13:41] Red: Yeah, I thought so, too. OK, well, thank you, Bruce. Thank you, Tracy.
[01:13:46] Unknown: Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Bruce. Thanks. Bye bye. Bye.
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