Episode 62: Aliens!?!?

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Unofficial, reviewed transcript. It may still contain mistakes; check the podcast when wording matters.

Speakers are labeled by first name where identified. Unidentified-speaker labels may refer to different people. Bracketed question marks indicate uncertain wording.

Transcript

[00:00:10]  Bruce: Welcome to The Theory of Anything podcast. Hey, guys.

[00:00:14]  Unidentified speaker: Hello.

[00:00:15]  Peter: Hi, Bruce. Hi, Tracy.

[00:00:17]  Bruce: We've got Tracy here today.

[00:00:18]  Peter: I almost said Cameo, sorry.

[00:00:22]  Bruce: So, it's been a little while since we had Tracy on the show, but we're gonna 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 okay. This is definitely an area where it's okay 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.

[00:01:28]  Bruce: And really, I think that these stories, even though I don't think they're likely to be, have aliens behind them, I think it'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]  Peter: 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, the darn BS detector, just really, I can't, I just don't believe it. Although, like you, 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...

[00:02:44]  Unidentified speaker: Oh, fair enough.

[00:02:45]  Peter: 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 enslave us, or experiment. I don't know what... 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 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 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.

[00:04:06]  Peter: I think they would probably recognize humans as fellow creators of knowledge and want to help us. But I've had through conversations with other people, I've realized not very many other people see it that way. So that's the case I'm going to make, though.

[00:04:26]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:04:28]  Bruce: Have you read, by any chance, have either of you read The Three-Body Problem in that series?

[00:04:34]  Unidentified speaker: No.

[00:04:35]  Unidentified speaker: Oh.

[00:04:35]  Bruce: By the way, excellent series. Cameo recommended it to me, and I'm very glad she did. 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. Obama talked about the series at one point, how much he enjoyed it, and things like that.

[00:04:54]  Peter: We're talking about a book here?

[00:04:56]  Unidentified speaker: It's a series of books, yeah.

[00:04:57]  Bruce: Although it's supposedly being turned into a TV show or something, it has something called the Dark Forest Theory, which is a 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.

[00:05:13]  Peter: I don't agree with that.

[00:05:14]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:05:15]  Bruce: 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]  Peter: 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.

[00:05:38]  Unidentified speaker: That's right.

[00:05:39]  Peter: Why we don't see any evidence in the universe of alien life. And 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 the Dark Forest Theory attempts to explain that by saying that it's because the aliens don't want to be found.

[00:06:07]  Unidentified speaker: That's right.

[00:06:07]  Bruce: They're afraid of being found.

[00:06:09]  Peter: Pessimistic interpretation. Yeah, that's the opposite of what I believe.

[00:06:16]  Bruce: So let's talk about what's happened kind of in the news recently. So the thing that's really probably been the biggest deal... This has been coming for a while. There have been a number of news stories. David Fravor, who's an Air Force, no, Navy, sorry, decorated individual who went on Lex Fridman's podcast and talked about seeing UFOs. And on that podcast, he's a totally believable witness. This is not a guy who's the slightest bit crazy. And he just says outright, I have no doubt it's aliens as 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.

[00:07:18]  Bruce: 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. Maybe if nothing else, it tells you something about the government, right? Is that they over classify things.

[00:07:34]  Peter: They're always so grainy and in black and white though. I mean, with HD cameras everywhere.

[00:07:40]  Tracy: It's never high def.

[00:07:41]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:07:42]  Unidentified speaker: Exactly.

[00:07:44]  Bruce: 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 Grusch story. So the debrief is a legitimate news outlet, albeit a smaller one, that did an article called Intelligence Officials Say US Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origins. And the News Nation did interviews with David Grusch. 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 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 at 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.

[00:08:42]  Bruce: 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's a group within the government that is hiding UFOs and they have non-human crafts. That is kind of a big deal. I don't believe aliens 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, but he kind of agrees with me. He says, 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.

[00:09:40]  Bruce: 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]  Peter: So the claim is 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.

[00:10:00]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[00:10:02]  Bruce: 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.

[00:10:16]  Unidentified speaker: There's something going on.

[00:10:18]  Unidentified speaker: Let's go find out what it is.

[00:10:21]  Bruce: So let me just start with that. Now let me give my own background. I would really love for this to be aliens. 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 Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster and Aliens, and I was really into cryptids. I didn't even know that term back then. I don't even know if it existed back then. But what we would call cryptids today, I have a son who was into that when he was the same age.

[00:10:50]  Unidentified speaker: Cryptid?

[00:10:51]  Unidentified speaker: What are you saying?

[00:10:52]  Bruce: Cryptids, yeah. They're animals that, like Bigfoot, that aren't known to exist, but that you keep hearing about. Cryptids.

[00:11:01]  Peter: Cryptids, okay.

[00:11:03]  Unidentified speaker: With crypt.

[00:11:04]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:11:04]  Unidentified speaker: [Unclear reply.]

[00:11:06]  Unidentified speaker: Cryptography.

[00:11:06]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:11:07]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:11:07]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:11:08]  Bruce: Secret or hidden is the root.

[00:11:10]  Peter: I got it.

[00:11:12]  Bruce: And I used to bring home books on UFOs, and I really wanted to believe in these. And I still have my inner boy who just really badly, really, really badly wants it to turn out that David Grusch 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 Bigfoot'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.

[00:11:57]  Peter: So this is not a proper critical rationalist attitude then?

[00:12:03]  Bruce: No, not even close. What is the proper critical rationalist attitude? So Mick West, he has a YouTube channel, and he was interviewed by NewsNation to represent the other point of view. And 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.

[00:12:29]  Peter: Oh, sure, sure.

[00:12:31]  Bruce: And he does a really great job of kind of explaining that there's no particular reason to go to the alien hypothesis to try to explain what we're seeing. So for example, David Grusch, 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. 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, there's this illegal activity going on and I'm blowing the whistle on it.

[00:13:36]  Bruce: And that's what he actually did, is he put in 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, are UFOs real? And is there someone in the government that's hiding information on this, right?

[00:14:08]  Peter: But you know, 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 going to keep this to myself? I just...

[00:14:36]  Bruce: So that's actually what happened, okay? 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, okay? And they had these stories to tell him that they claimed 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. Okay, 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, okay?

[00:15:36]  Bruce: 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 as the best theory, he's seen none of it. He's interviewed people who have claimed to have seen it, okay? And 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. It may be an analysis or we're really unsure, right? And 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, okay?

[00:16:43]  Bruce: The problem with that is, is that 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 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 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.

[00:18:01]  Bruce: And I think that that is a rough, we can just use the term evidence for this theory and understand it in that way. 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 two, 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.

[00:18:34]  Peter: I think that's an excellent summary of your three hours on corroboration. But for more info, refer to the corroboration episode.

[00:18:48]  Bruce: I'm going to go ahead and continue to use terms like that. For one thing, I've got problems with the Popperian War on words, right? I do not want Popperians 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. You just can't get away from it. So there's no point attacking somebody else for it if you're going to do it yourself. So anyhow, I think we should just get past that. 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.

[00:19:50]  Bruce: And that's fine. That fits perfectly with critical rationalism. There shouldn't be any issue with me explaining to you.

[00:19:56]  Unidentified speaker: That's what I mean.

[00:19:57]  Bruce: Okay, 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 Grusch sees that as evidence for aliens. And in a certain sense, it is, right? It's a problem for the theory that there are not aliens. 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? 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]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:20:45]  Peter: Well, 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 inner eight-year-old boys or whatever. It would be kind of weird if there wasn't evidence for aliens out there somewhere. I mean, people 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.

[00:21:18]  Unidentified speaker: Right.

[00:21:18]  Bruce: Do 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?

[00:21:26]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[00:21:28]  Bruce: Have either of you suffered from sleep paralysis ever? Have you, Tracy?

[00:21:32]  Unidentified speaker: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:33]  Bruce: Tell us about sleep paralysis, Tracy.

[00:21:36]  Tracy: So sleep paralysis for me, when it happens, you're awake, but you can't move your body. You can't open your eyes. You can't twitch.

[00:21:49]  Unidentified speaker: You can't do anything.

[00:21:50]  Tracy: It's very claustrophobic. It's very disconcerting.

[00:21:55]  Bruce: Have you hallucinated when you're in sleep paralysis?

[00:21:58]  Tracy: 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.

[00:22:07]  Unidentified speaker: And it sounds crazy.

[00:22:09]  Tracy: 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

[00:22:20]  Unidentified speaker: like, like...

[00:22:21]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:22:22]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:22:22]  Unidentified speaker: It's not nice.

[00:22:23]  Bruce: The dark shadowy figure, I've seen them. They're extremely common with sleep paralysis. So there are many people who have sleep paralysis who believe that the dark shadowy figures are what cause sleep paralysis. To them, they're seeing demons or ghosts or something, right? So let me explain. 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. So it would 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 where you're having dreams, and then you wake up finally. Okay, so keep in mind that dreaming is this weird state where you're partially conscious and partially not, right?

[00:23:24]  Bruce: 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 that shouldn't and stuff like that. It's actually a kind of madness. Everybody has experienced dreams, so you know what it's like to be mad and be insane. 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 waking 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. Confusing dreams in reality, like a certain friend of ours, Tracy, used to do,

[00:24:11]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[00:24:12]  Bruce: 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, and a few minutes afterwards, it starts to get erased. And if you go write it down really quick, it moves it to a different part of the brain that doesn't get erased. And that's why writing a dream journal allows you to remember your dreams, whereas if you don't write it down... And I actually tried 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 dream journal. And for the most part, the dreams are just so weird. I don't want to remember them anyhow. A lot of people have coherent dreams. My wife has very coherent dreams. Like mine are so incoherent, I mean.

[00:25:03]  Bruce: Occasionally. So to keep your body from moving while you're dreaming and you're almost awake, your body locks up. Right. So sleep paralysis would be where you start to come out of the dream state, and you're starting to... Like your eyes are partially open, so you're starting to see your room, but you're still dreaming. And so you have this inner mix of what you're seeing in reality and what you're seeing in the dream. And I have been... Let me tell you some of my hallucinations in sleep paralysis. I've had a ghost grab my bed and move it up and down. It's terrifying, by the way.

[00:25:44]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:25:45]  Unidentified speaker: Right.

[00:25:45]  Unidentified speaker: It is terrifying when you're in it.

[00:25:46]  Bruce: 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 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. I also once had a roommate. We were sleeping on the ground or something. I can't remember exactly why we were doing that. But we were sleeping on the ground. And in the sleep paralysis, he kept shoving me. And he was in my face shoving me, 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 way across the room, and he's just sleeping on the ground, and I can see him there.

[00:26:52]  Bruce: 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, is that they always disappear immediately. Like the bed's shaking, and I know if I can make my arm move, the bed will stop shaking, because the dream will stop. And I'm thinking that in the state of paralysis. So I'll go, okay, move my arm so I can stop being scared by this ghost, you know? And then I move my arm, 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.

[00:27:44]  Bruce: 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 haunted, like famous haunted house, one of the things they've 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 take a haunted house...

[00:28:20]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:28:21]  Unidentified speaker: Yikes.

[00:28:21]  Bruce: If you take a haunted house, and you go and you change and upgrade the heater, the house will stop being haunted.

[00:28:30]  Unidentified speaker: That's really interesting.

[00:28:31]  Peter: I believe that.

[00:28:33]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:28:37]  Bruce: So this is, what I'm trying to get at 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? Now, I'm not sure I can explain to you why the shadowy figure is so common with sleep paralysis. It's very weird. Now, one of the things 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. If that's kind of in your brain, that that's a possibility, you're going to experience it that way.

[00:29:36]  Bruce: And 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, okay? 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, and 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 Hendersons, 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.

[00:30:39]  Bruce: This is well known in scientific circles, and it wouldn't be that hard to track them down. And so the fact that you can't do that, 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, I'm not going to start thinking, oh, this must be a hallucination because of the poop theory. I'm not. 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.

[00:31:39]  Bruce: I mean, it would totally change my attitude towards that theory. And so I do think experientialness 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 evidence for the theory that there's actually aliens or demons or whatever. And to them, 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?

[00:32:38]  Bruce: If I've seen Bigfoot and it's roaring in my face, so I, quote, know Bigfoot exists, okay, me telling Tracy that does not count as evidence for Tracy. Right, it doesn't.

[00:32:51]  Unidentified speaker: Right.

[00:32:52]  Unidentified speaker: It doesn't.

[00:32:52]  Bruce: It's a completely non-transferable kind of evidence, which is why we entirely exclude it from science, because science requires repeatable observations. That's part of the nature of the scientific method, as we call it. I know Popper said it wasn't a method. I kind of disagree with him on that. 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. 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?

[00:33:49]  Bruce: 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 can make the demon disappear. To me, that's a pretty testable circumstance, which is why I don't buy it, right? I think it's just a hallucination period end of story.

[00:34:05]  Peter: I think it's pretty common for people, even seemingly rational, scientifically minded people, that they'll always have that one thing, whether it's the haunted house or they took a drug like DMT and talked to elves or something.

[00:34:25]  Bruce: Talked to elves, right.

[00:34:27]  Peter: That's actually pretty common. I mean, I would be too afraid to do something like that, but people will actually do that and have conversations with spirit entities and things. I think it's very common for people to have these kinds of beliefs.

[00:34:47]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[00:34:48]  Bruce: And you know what? That's not a bad thing, right? I mean, 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 I could imagine 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 was 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. It really sounds crazy, right? It really does. It sounds like a cryptid.

[00:35:35]  Tracy: Crawling duck.

[00:35:36]  Unidentified speaker: Right.

[00:35:37]  Bruce: Except that it happens to be real, right? And so without the ability for someone to go experience something and then say, okay, I believe in this, and now I'm going to go use the scientific method to try to convince people that I'm right, 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 flak for it. But I'm really glad we've got a legitimate scientist who's out there trying to study Bigfoot.

[00:36:34]  Bruce: I mean, Bigfoot, I don't think he's real, but I'm a fallibilist. 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.

[00:37:01]  Peter: And science benefits so much from pushing back against these kinds of things, too. It really just strengthens the institution. That's why, as far as I'm concerned, more cranks the better.

[00:37:13]  Unidentified speaker: I mean, I think...

[00:37:18]  Bruce: Okay, so with all that kind of in mind, let's talk about aliens and these sightings and things like that. So 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's 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 started... I can't remember when it started, like in the 50s or 60s or something. There's a book coming out on the first alien abduction that I've already pre-ordered 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 or against it, right? It's Barney and Betty Hill incident. Yeah, so it was an American couple who claim they were abducted by extraterrestrials in a rural portion of the state of New Hampshire from September 19th to 20th in 1961.

[00:38:19]  Bruce: I don't know if that's technically the first case of UFO abduction, but 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. 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. By the way, if I ever do find evidence that there's aliens, I'm totally going to be pro-alien, right? Because my inner boy really wants there to be aliens. Have I mentioned that, that my inner boy really wants there to be aliens?

[00:39:01]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[00:39:03]  Bruce: 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 are 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 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. Okay, so we do in fact have a craft-retrieval program.

[00:40:12]  Bruce: I don't know that for sure. This is my theory. Makes sense we would, right? 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's familiar with because it's military. And they see things that they're not used to. And then they have in their mind this myth of aliens. And they can't help but read into what they're seeing. This is an alien craft. Now, it would make sense. They're not told too much. They're part of the program, but it's top secret. So nobody's telling them who this is, why they're doing it. They just know, my job is 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.

[00:41:11]  Peter: That really has the ring of truth.

[00:41:13]  Unidentified speaker: Right.

[00:41:13]  Bruce: And 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 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 almost expect that to happen. So 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 Grusch, who's super believable, they would go to him and in complete sincerity say, I've seen alien crafts.

[00:41:59]  Peter: Especially with all these new drones and things. You know, my son bought a drone for $20 on Amazon, and I just couldn't believe how well it works flying with precision just around our house. Well, maybe it was $40, I don't know, but it worked. And it takes HD footage and everything. I mean, I can only imagine what the Chinese government has or something, probably things that we can't even hardly believe.

[00:42:30]  Bruce: 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 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.

[00:43:25]  Bruce: 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 Grusch having people tell him they've seen something, right? And so 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 fits other best explanations available to us, et cetera. Okay. 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? I mean, what's the crash rate? How many are there, right? And how many have we recovered? You know, their spacecrafts must be way less reliable than the average car.

[00:44:35]  Bruce: Right? I mean, it doesn't make sense, right? Now, I've had people who I've talked to who believe in UFOs, and think that's the explanation behind the David Grusch 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. So one of them said that, I think the idea 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.

[00:45:41]  Bruce: There was some sort of engagement that took place. This is a good example of an ad hoc save. 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 hostile alien crafts or something like that.

[00:46:01]  Peter: I guess that would explain why it didn't happen so much in the Middle Ages or something. They didn't have the technology for shooting these crafts down.

[00:46:11]  Bruce: You know, one of my UFO books as a kid, it actually claimed that there was a UFO in the Bible. And I can't remember what the exact...

[00:46:22]  Unidentified speaker: Sort of revelations or something?

[00:46:25]  Bruce: Yeah, 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, I mean, I guess fair enough. Like if we're going to go all the way into an un-intestable theory like aliens, then maybe we can explain them as they saw them as demons or they saw them as something else. 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.

[00:47:09]  Unidentified speaker: They come from a different dimension.

[00:47:10]  Bruce: 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? I'm not going to go so far as saying, no, I know that 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 Grusch 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. And at that point, that will falsify the theory that I just explained, because it's a falsifiable theory.

[00:48:09]  Peter: I really think that's the right attitude. I think that's why the word fallibilist seems like rings true for me more than skeptic. 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.

[00:48:30]  Bruce: I think that trying to keep an open mind... 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. 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. 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. It's 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?

[00:49:35]  Bruce: 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, I just am a total pure critical rationalist, I would call them 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 keep an open mind. And we should always just keep an open mind, right? Okay, maybe it will be aliens. I will re-evaluate 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, okay? Such as there actually being an alien body that comes forth that scientists can see and go start experimenting on.

[00:50:32]  Bruce: 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 as coming from Earth, right? That would really force me to re-think this. And I would at that point. And I would gladly at that point, because I would really prefer it's aliens, because I have this inner child, did I explain my inner child to you?

[00:50:56]  Unidentified speaker: We've met him.

[00:50:59]  Bruce: 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, pooh-pooh them. 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]  Peter: Well, you've made a heck of a lot of sense. I can't think your perspective rings true for me. [Wording unclear.] What about 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—[unclear] make any sense at all. 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 mine uranium or something like that? They could create their own elements if they have that technology. Enslave us? Well, that's preposterous. They can create a robot or AI or whatever that's going to do a lot more than any human could. I mean, what—what are they, what are they doing? There's just no—there's no good explanation. I think that the only...

[00:52:51]  Peter: What would make a heck of a lot more sense, and maybe this is my crazy optimism speaking, and also plays into ideas about morality, which I think is—"objective" is the right word. The idea that these aliens would have technology that would be far beyond us, but then would have a sense of morality that would be just completely different than us, or I would say inferior to us. I mean, if they're coming to Earth and they see these creatures, these fellow creatures capable of science and explanation and reason and not wanting to help these creatures cure cancer and cure death and live better lives, I would say that would be highly immoral, I guess. And so it just doesn't make sense to me. I think if they came, like I said, they would want to help us.

[00:54:12]  Bruce: In the episode where we talked about AGI alignment and safety, I introduced the idea of speculations being easy to vary. I need to do an episode on easy-to-variness, because I really feel like 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 respond to you by saying, oh, well, maybe they're hostile. We were hostile when we first encountered other people. Or maybe they're like Star Trek. 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.

[00:55:15]  Bruce: 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, why? Right? It's just not a part of the way we think anymore, right? So I totally agree with what you're saying. But I do think we're in the easy to vary part of an easy to vary explanation. And 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 see the craft.

[00:56:16]  Bruce: At that point, I'm going to have a totally different opinion. But I think you're 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 like we would, right? It kind of makes sense.

[00:56:40]  Peter: And you look at the history of our own technological development, that it does kind of seem like morality has improved alongside technology. As soon as the enlightenment, the spark or whatever kind of started, and our technological growth started to skyrocket, well, suddenly you kind of figure out, well, maybe slavery is not such a good thing. Maybe women should be more equal to men. All this moral growth seems to go along with technological growth. Looking at our own history, they don't seem unrelated. So, if anything, I would just suspect the aliens, and AGI too. You can make a parallel argument with AGI with all this. They're probably, if anything, people always think about them being less moral than us, or at least differently moral, to be fair. I think a more plausible idea is that if we create AGI, they're going to be more moral than us.

[00:57:47]  Peter: They're going to be able to look at [unclear]—equally, equally or more, I would say.

[00:57:52]  Bruce: Let me clarify. You're not just talking about AGI. You're actually talking about super intelligences. 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 knowledge faster.

[00:58:11]  Unidentified speaker: That's a good distinction.

[00:58:12]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, super intelligence, I guess.

[00:58:13]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:58:14]  Unidentified speaker: Because an AGI doesn't have to be a super intelligence.

[00:58:16]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:58:17]  Peter: Don't you think it would be though, most likely?

[00:58:20]  Bruce: You know what? I don't have any reason to believe that at all.

[00:58:25]  Unidentified speaker: Fair enough.

[00:58:26]  Bruce: Let's talk about that for a second. Because I think this is something that a lot of people have missed. 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. But the architecture we have of our current computers has typically a single processor or a processor with four cores, or maybe at most, a specialized set of processors is a whole bunch of them doing graphics or something like that. And consider how that's different than the brain, where every single neuron is both memory and a processor. It's a totally different architecture. They're not even similar architectures. 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.

[00:59:27]  Bruce: 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?

[01:00:06]  Peter: That's an excellent point. I never heard it quite like that, but that makes a lot of sense.

[01:00:11]  Bruce: 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? So maybe the concept of a superintelligence in this sort of limited sense, because I would question whether faster is the same as a superintelligence. But maybe in this limited sense of simply being faster, maybe we eventually need to worry about that.

[01:01:02]  Bruce: But 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 I just think it's—the idea it's more probable... [Wording unclear.] 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]  Peter: No, that's very compelling. I hadn't heard it quite put like that.

[01:01:43]  Bruce: So this is what I mean by the easy-to-vary 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 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 enough to... Even if we do need an AGI safety program, and I'm not ruling that possibility out at all, our genes have an AGI safety program on us, so it's not unthinkable that we'll need to have one on the AGI, okay?

[01:02:35]  Bruce: And we don't always hate it. We tend to hate pain, so we do sometimes hate it. But if you were to remove somebody's sex drive, which is part of the 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 will hate us putting a safety program on it, right? I don't know enough to ask that question yet. 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.

[01:03:28]  Bruce: That's not necessarily true, but it could be true. You should be as worried about that as not having a safety program. 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, 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.

[01:04:26]  Bruce: 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.

[01:04:32]  Peter: Well, that was a compelling digression.

[01:04:35]  Unidentified speaker: I'll say that.

[01:04:36]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:04:36]  Bruce: 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? At this point, let's say that it was non-humans behind these crafts. Let's pretend like that's actually the truth. I don't know what you do other than exactly what I already said. Those craft... 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? Is it really actually the Loch Ness Monster? 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.

[01:05:35]  Peter: That's actually, you bring up another kind of compelling thing about punishing people in the government for keeping that a secret. Not to get vindictive or anything, but if you're a government official, it's not just keeping a secret about Russia or something, something secret. You're keeping something secret that is fundamental to our understanding of our place in the universe. You are depriving knowledge from—life, potentially life-altering knowledge—from 7 billion people. It's like that is highly immoral. I think that's so wrong. If that's what they are doing, then geez, I overthrow the government, really.

[01:06:24]  Bruce: Well, according to this theory, it's a secret ops group within the government.

[01:06:28]  Unidentified speaker: It's not the highest levels.

[01:06:30]  Bruce: The president doesn't know about it.

[01:06:32]  Unidentified speaker: The Congress doesn't.

[01:06:34]  Bruce: Again, if the president knew about it, if Congress knew about it, it would have leaked out years ago.

[01:06:41]  Peter: 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.

[01:06:47]  Unidentified speaker: I think he would be going after that.

[01:06:49]  Bruce: Well, he couldn't keep our regular secrets.

[01:06:52]  Unidentified speaker: I know.

[01:06:56]  Bruce: So yeah. And again, this goes back to the easy-varying part of the theory. It's the fact that 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 refusing to let Congress do their regular oversight. Literally breaking the law. The fact that you even have to go there with this theory is just not a good sign. I really need something more solid than testimony that I can't have scientists check, right? It just needs to be more before we're really going to start taking the alien theory seriously.

[01:07:43]  Peter: Makes a lot of sense. Well, take home an image from this episode. Bigfoot is strangling Bruce. He's got him on the ground. And Bruce says, well, what about the poop?

[01:07:56]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[01:07:59]  Bruce: This can't be real, right? So I actually wanted to mention one other thing about that. So the opposite side of the Bigfoot principle is, 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.

[01:08:24]  Peter: Well, I mean, maybe the devil's in the details there. Do these things look like what has been seen previously?

[01:08:31]  Unidentified speaker: No, they're just apes.

[01:08:32]  Unidentified speaker: They're just apes.

[01:08:33]  Peter: They're just like... Do they look... There's that famous Bigfoot picture that looks like... I think they even found the monkey suit.

[01:08:41]  Unidentified speaker: It doesn't look [unclear]...

[01:08:42]  Bruce: It doesn't look... It's just an ape. It's a species of ape that we didn't know existed in North America. And it's apparently been there for a very, very long period of time.

[01:08:52]  Peter: Well, then I would have to say it does not...

[01:08:54]  Bruce: You would see it as disproving Bigfoot.

[01:08:56]  Peter: Disproving, yeah.

[01:08:57]  Bruce: I think I would see it as proving Bigfoot.

[01:08:59]  Unidentified speaker: Okay, fair enough.

[01:09:00]  Bruce: 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? I would, right? That would be... 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? 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.

[01:09:38]  Unidentified speaker: That's just not as exciting.

[01:09:40]  Unidentified speaker: It is.

[01:09:41]  Bruce: It is kind of exciting, right? So, and you're right. 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 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.

[01:10:25]  Peter: 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 it. That's not what I mean.

[01:10:38]  Bruce: 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 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, okay? But 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?

[01:11:38]  Bruce: I think most scientists would not even bother to go try to analyze the DNA that's supposed to be a Bigfoot 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 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.

[01:12:15]  Tracy: I thought you were going down the Chupacabra route for a second.

[01:12:18]  Bruce: No, no, no.

[01:12:19]  Tracy: No, I haven't heard this, though.

[01:12:21]  Bruce: It's a true story. Like, Expedition Unknown, the guy who does that series, he actually went and interviewed them. They're all adults now. They all swear by it, that back when they were kids, that as a group, they saw 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, right? Like, I don't know how to. Mass delusions.

[01:13:01]  Unidentified speaker: Right.

[01:13:02]  Bruce: I don't know, right? I think there's a lot of things like that out there that we actually... I would like to know what was behind that. I don't think it's aliens, but I think something happened. I just don't know what it is, right?

[01:13:15]  Peter: Well, kind of 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]  Bruce: I want it to be aliens, though. I really do. I want to find out the kids actually met an alien.

[01:13:35]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[01:13:36]  Bruce: All right. Well, we could probably wrap up this episode. This was a fun episode.

[01:13:40]  Peter: Yeah, I thought so, too. Well, thank you, Bruce. Thank you, Tracy.

[01:13:45]  Unidentified speaker: Thanks, Peter.

[01:13:45]  Unidentified speaker: Thanks, Bruce.

[01:13:46]  Unidentified speaker: Thanks.

[01:13:47]  Unidentified speaker: Bye-bye.

[01:13:48]  Unidentified speaker: Bye.

[01:13:48]  Unidentified speaker: Bye.

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