Resolves YES if we find out that any UFOs are "real", in the sense that they're real objects of about the purported size that are actually flying around at those insane speeds/manuverability. They could be alien technology or secret Earth technology, either one resolves this to YES.
Otherwise this resolves to NO once any of the following are true:
We have a clear explanation for all outstanding credible claims. (e.g. the "tic tac" UFO that several people claim to have seen at close range.)
There's no longer any serious discussion about whether UFOs are real and pretty much all of humanity agrees they're not. (Similar to the current stance on the Earth being round.)
We've discovered the theory of everything and know that such UFOs would not be possible to build.
We've explored >90% of the Milky Way and have not found any signs of other spacefaring life, and we are not yet known to have invented such technology ourselves.
UFOs that turn out to be normal planes or balloons don't count; in order for this market to resolve to YES, they have to be something that uses much more advanced technology than is publically known. (e.g. flying with no control surfaces, able to survive g-forces that no known plane could survive, able to hover with no apparent source of thrust, etc.) If it turns out to be advanced hologram or mind-altering technlogy used to fool people into thinking they saw a UFO, that also resolves NO.
This market is only about UFOs observed prior to market creation. Though of course if we later find a new UFO that is such advanced technology, that would be strong evidence towards some of the earlier ones having been as well.
To bet on whether they're of human or extraterrestrial origin, see /IsaacKing/if-any-ufos-are-highly-advanced-tec
>Resolution date: 2100
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>[...] this resolves to NO [if we've] explored >90% of the Milky Way and have not found any signs of other spacefaring life [...]
Presumably you don't mean to imply that this be done in person, yes? Is your proposal that this be done with telescopes with resolution higher than the JWST, eg the Nautilus Deep Space Observatory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautilus_Deep_Space_Observatory?
Because I don't think that it would be remotely plausible for humans to systematically cover 90% of 8 trillion cubic light-years of space (the volume of the Milky Way galaxy) and visit in person each and every planet, catalogue every rock, etc within the next 100 years, let alone the next 80. With the sort of propulsion systems that we have available now (typically approx 0.1c, or (very) optimistically max 0.5c relative to ordinary space), this would likely take tens of thousands of years to achieve. At the very least.
So presumably either
1) you must mean something like a next generation space telescope as I've indicated above or
2) this particular NO resolution criterion is deliberately rhetorical.
You should clarify whether this question refers to the UFO/UAPs observed so far, or future ones as well. I'm assuming the former based on
We have a clear explanation for all outstanding credible claims. (e.g. the "tic tac" UFO that several people claim to have seen at close range.)
But it's not clear whether this mean outstanding claims at the time of resolution, vs now.
@IsaacKing Thanks.
Certainly if it looks similar then that would be strong evidence. But I think it's more likely that if we see an alien spaceship that it doesn't look anything like the UFOs.
So I'm curious as to why the market at https://manifold.markets/SteveSokolowski/what-is-going-on-with-david-gruschs-de3add9e7579 doubles the value of this market. I think it's because many people aren't clearly thinking through all the alternatives about what's going on now.
It's interesting how at first this topic seems like it's a bunch of hoaxes and garbage that people could just be making up. But when Grusch took the stand, he forced a choice of outcomes, all of which are ridiculously improbable, but one of which must to be true. While I won't bet on the linked market, I do see this one as a good proxy that I can arbitrage with YES, and this is coming from someone who definitely hopes that the answer is NO.
There clearly is a response bias when people are presented with a list of choices instead of disconnected options.
That market is badly formatted because Grusch is claiming Aliens, not advanced human technology. He could be perjuring himself while there are also some fancy drones out there that can fool multiple sensors.
And I can't be bothered to bet 1000s of mana keeping the aliens option at 1% where it belongs.
resolves to NO once we have a clear explanation for all outstanding credible claims
Is there a list of "outstanding credible claims" somewhere?
I'd be more inclined to bet if this didn't feel like a market that's going to have weird goalpost moving going on, with a decent chance of just never resolving because some of the claims are going to be persistently unclear.
A companion market of "will all outstanding credible claims have explanations by $date" might help.
@EvanDaniel I've edited the description to add more NO resolution criteria, that seem reasonable?
@Joshua Why should it be low single digits? Many people are publicly committing perjury as protected whistleblowers if you are right. And the intelligence community inspector generals have very publicly stated they disagree with you after actually seeing all of Grusch's evidence we haven't seen yet. So why so confident??
I'm not claiming to have a huge amount of confidence myself.
I just think that markets like this are propped up by people betting yes because they expect them to be confirmed in the next few years, while NO voters stay away because they expect things to remain unclear and this market to not resolve until after we're all dead.
The increased loan feature gives much stronger incentive to correct long-term markets though, so I expect this market to go down.
I would buy more if I thought it would ever resolve "no". I think every outstanding UFO claim is ultimately something mundane, but I also think it's unlikely that we'll find a clear explanation for every single outstanding credible claim, especially ones along the lines of "I saw something weird one time". Probably some of them will remain without explanation.
If this article has any basis in fact, this market should resolve to "yes". https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-retrieved-non-human-craft/
@TurnipPotato That article is the biggest nothingburger of 2023. It contains literally zero proof of anything. https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/the-ufo-craze-was-created-by-government
I think the main crux here is how "advanced" the secret earth technology would have to be. If it's something that's like 5 years ahead of publicly known flying tech, then I have this at 80%. If it's more like 50 years (of 20th century tech advancement speed, ignoring agi) ahead, then I have this at 2% or something.
@Nikola "hover with no apparent source of thrust" puts this at really low probability, however the other two make it not that improbable (surviving 0.01 g more than the best known plane seems not that hard but seems to be outside of the sprit of the question, and GPT-4 says some aircraft already don't use control surfaces)
@Nikola "insane" speeds would imply performance much better than known SOTA. Maybe we should operationalize this as "being able to fly at more than 10x the speed of known aircraft" or something similar.
@Nikola ask chatgpt about quantum mechanics. Then quantum chemistry and properties, periodic table deviations, and current phenomena attributed to quantum effects.
@EdwardYu it's only a feeling I have through a long pattern of waiting and watching how information develops but I think the rules of quantum mechanics make some of these "feats of high technology" possible.
@EdwardYu ask any advanced chemist about quantum phenomena regarding the periodic table and they will allude to mysterious forces that chemistry and physics has yet to explain. Information and how information is resolved seems to be a common thread When trying to describe phenomena at the electron level or smaller
@EdwardYu oh interesting, I was thinking more something like "will UFOs turn out to be aircraft using publicly unknown breakthroughs in quantum physics"
@Nikola also made. I try to leave a bit a room in these markets. I'm still unsure of how to phrase market questions.