UFO Betting: Put Up or Shut Up

My $150K against your $1K if you're still up for it at 150:1.  Paypal to yudkowsky@gmail.com with "UFO bet" in subject or text, please include counterparty payment info if it's not "email the address which sent me that payment".

Key qualifier:  This applies only to UFOs spotted before July 19th, 2023, rather than applying to eg future UFOs generated by secret AI projects which were not putatively flying around and spotted before July 19th, 2023.

ADDED:  $150K is as much as I care to stake at my current wealth level, to rise to this bettors' challenge and make this point; not taking on further bets except at substantially less extreme odds.

When it comes to solution criteria, it might be useful to have a Metaculus question. Metaculus questions have a good track record of being resolved in a fair matter. 

The thing that has me pretty confused about your confidence here is not just that there's something weird going on here, but, that you expect it to be confirmed within 5 years.

I would give 200:1 odds for up to 50,000 of my own dollars.

My likelihood for one of the weird hypotheses you listed being true is higher than .5%. However my odds are much lower that we get any significant evidence of those hypotheses being true within the next 5 years and that UFOs + UAPs are caused by that weird hypothesis.

I think the issue is going to be disagreements about what the > 50% likelihood means. A lot of people are saying the current round of military and federal officials coming forward with their stories about the government keeping alien craft in secret facilities is significant evidence in favor of aliens. I would like a resolution criteria that is either public polling (>50% of people polled say that X hypothesis is true) or maybe a particular public figure taking a serious stance (Scott Alexander seriously claims that UFOs are shadow US government 4d vehicles extending into our visible space).

How come you're trusting essentially random internet strangers to pay up significant sum of money if they lose a bet in up to 5 years?

An Update: I have now paid out $4864 to 9 different bettors. From this point on I will only be accepting offers with at least 150:1 odds. I would love to make more bets, so feel free to reach out with offers at any point. Thanks to everyone who has already finalized bets with me. 

I'm willing to pay out a maximum of $800,000 USD for a 200:1 bet of $4k. I'll pay out at 666:1 if the biologic pilots are confirmed to be supernatural in origin, ex. demons or angels.

This sounds like the opening premise of a fun TV show or film.

UFO believer makes big bet with (for the sake of TV) one very rich person. Then heads out on an epic road trip in a camper van to find the alien evidence. A reporter covers the story and she starts travelling with him sending updates back to her paper. Obviously they fall for eachother.

They have various fun adventures where they keep encountering unconvincing evidence, or occasionally super-convincing evidence (UFO flys by) that they comically fail to catch on camera. Meanwhile the rich person on the other side of the bet becomes a villain, sending a hench-person to cut the tires on their van, get them in trouble with the police and generally obstruct the process.

We're still doing this? Fine. No need to arrange any odds or payment methods or your bankroll limits, I'm willing to just commit my money:

In 5 years, if it has become a scientific consensus that any of the past UFO observations are extraterrestrial intelligent aliens, I will straight up just send $1,000 to any place Tyler Cowen or Robin Hanson† or RatsWrongAboutUAP choose.

(If space aliens are semi-consensus and I weasel out of it anyway, then you will have to settle for laughing at me online.)

While we're on the topic: in addition to the NY Post expose on the toxic stew of fraud, quasi-embezzlement, abuse of classification, echo chambers, and misinterpreted Chinese spy balloon references (carrying water for a dictatorship), which manufactured most of the recent UFO craze, today the NYT has a profile of Avi Loeb which helps explain where a lot of this UFO noise is coming from: rich old techies subsidizing intellectual hobbies (perhaps due to deep emotional attachment to the belief there must be biological aliens like us out there, we have to be going to the stars, it can't just be that we're going to get to AGI and render the whole thing moot). In addition to Yuri Milner, whose role is well-known, there's also a "Eugene Jhong" who is a 'software engineer' I've never heard of but who has put at least $1.2m into Loeb's aliens*, and Charles Hoskinson (Ethereum) appears to be putting in millions, at least, in bankrolling Loeb's recent oceanographic expedition to find UFO crash debris ($1.5m there alone in addition to use of his private jet).

* He has also apparently put $1.5m into DMT psychedelic research, which seems like a better topic to research...
† Inasmuch as they are the most notable public figures in our circles in terms of I'm-not-saying-it's-aliens-but-it's-aliens, which isn't fooling anyone, so it seems only fair to let them pick if they are ultimately vindicated.

I don't know what assumptions the OP has, but don't forget the simulation argument: If you think we are heeded for super intelligence, then the following all become more likely:

• You are in a simulation - maybe a weird one, maybe one that messes with your brain
• Aliens intervene to prevent the creation of the ASI.
• An ASI creates unbelievable effects on Earth.

Max bet $50k, I would be totally happy to bet at 50:1 odds.

I'd take a bet at 1:50 odds for $200. I'm happy to let the LW community adjudicate, or for us to talk it over. I'm currently at something like 5e-5 for there being UFOs-as-non-prosaic. So I don't think I'd be that hard to convince.

I'm interested in my $250k against your $10k.

So I could get 0.5% of the committed payout right away, but would have to avoid spending the committed value for 5 years, even though the world could change significantly in a lot of non UAP-related ways in that time frame. That's not actually that attractive.

The whole idea conflates refusal to accept the bet for reasons that apply to bets in general, with refusing to accept the bet because you're not really confident that UFOs are mundane.

The original post, the actual bet, and the short scuffle in the comments is exactly the kind of epistemic virtue, basic respect, and straight-talking object-level discussion that I like about LessWrong. 

I'm surprised and saddened that there aren't more posts like this one around (prediction markets are one thing; loud, public bets on carefully written LW posts are another).

Having something like this occur every ~month seems important from the standpoint of keeping the garden on its toes and remind everyone that beliefs must pay rent, possibly in the form of PayPal cash transfers. 

Do you OP have access to secret (non public) information related to the bet?

I will predict that no bet with significant stakes (say, over $200 from the poster) gets made.  This is a stunt, and the terms (of resolution and collection) are way too loose to be useful.

update a few days later: an established (ish - 6-month history, with quite a few comments and karma.  @simon [LW · GW].) poster has confirmed that approx $2000 payment was received.  Something weird could still be discovered, but this raises my estimate of legitimacy from ~15% to ~70% (had thought as high as 85% until I realized that it's $100k agreement for simon to pay, which is very high for such things).  Note that I had a quite low prior that an anonymous offer from a new poster would be legit, so this indicates a pretty big update.

further update: multiple accepted bets and confirmation of payments received.  moving closer to the 85% likelihood I previously experienced, which is probably the maximum I can reach until a few months go by without any shenanigans being mentioned.  I do hope there will be a summary posted, which can be updated each year as participants acknowledge their ongoing bets and mention any evidence that would change their individual or collective beliefs.

Hesitant to bet while sick, but I'll offer max bet $20k at 25:1.

If you were offering, say, $100K at 5:1 odds, I would be very inclined to take it, despite the risk that e.g. next month's X-Day finally delivers, because that would let me set in motion things that, according to me, have their own transformative potential. But I'm not sure about the value of these smaller sums. 

This is a very interesting topic, since from my own perception there is a high market inefficiency regarding this topic, and the lack of international press around the recent developments on the USA Congress UAP hearings.

I'll bet. Up to $100k of mine against $2k of yours. 50:1. (I honestly think the odds are more like 1000+:1, and would in principle be willing to go higher, but generally think people shouldn't bet more than they'd be willing to lose, as bets above that amount could drive bad behavior. I would be happy to lose $100k on discovering aliens/time travel/new laws of physics/supernatural/etc.)

Happy to write a contract of sorts. I'm a findable figure and I've made public bets before (e.g., $4k wagered on AGI-fueled growth by 2043).

I am concerned for your monetary strategy (unless you're rich). Let's say you're absolutely right that LW is overconfident, and that there is actually a 10% chance of aliens rather than 0.5. So this is a good deal! 20x!

But only on the margin.

Depending on your current wealth it may only be rational to take a few hundred dollars worth of these bets for this particular bet. If you go making lots of these types of bets (low probability, high payoff, great EXpected returns) for a small fraction of your wealth each, you should expect to make money, but if you make only 3 or 4 of these types of bets, you are more likely to lose money because your are loading all your gains into a small fraction of possibilities in exchange for huge payouts, and most outcomes end up with you losing money.

See for example the St. Petersburg paradox which has infinite expected return, but very finite actual value given limited assets for the banker and or the player.

Out of curiosity, is there anywhere you've written about your object-level view on this? The EY post fleshes out what I would call strong consensus on LW thoroughly, is there some equivalence of this that you've put together?

Congratulations, you have entered into the legendarium @RatsWrongAboutUAP [LW · GW]. I fully agree with you and think you will win big here. I have been trying to create a bet with Eliezer since 2021 on this same issue (I have receipts) but could not word the criteria as elegantly as you did. Now, what I wanted to comment on was expanding on one of the criteria.

The Breakaway Group. This example may not fall under any of the previous explicit examples: they are still human, they are not an ancient civilization, they are not time travellers. The Breakaway Group represents a rogue element using the cover of the national security apparatus of unacknowledged special access programs to avoid disclosures, oversight and achieve compartmentalization of tech and knowledge. This is the complicated world where the nature of these programs may not be fully revealed due to the enmeshment of the military industrial complex with the nation state, but craft and/or new technology may be revealed that still matches UFOs because they came from reverse engineering programs or recovered craft.

I would consider the above scenario satisfying the "Secret Manhattan style project with beyond next gen physics, that we had back in the 60's" criteria, partially. But there are some additional assumptions built-in, like the potential illegal nature of Breakaway Group activities (operating without proper oversight, murder to maintain secrecy as per Grusch) meaning that it is not like the Manhattan project at all. But it would still be significantly weird to cause ontological shock, so it is likely to satisfy the same. Still, worth clarification.

I am available here or on twitter @micksabox [LW · GW] for anyone else to offer bets under same resolution criteria, if that is allowed.

Happy to bet $40k at 110:1 20:1 odds ($364 $2k). (Edited Sep 2023; previous bets confirmed at previous odds.)

USDC ERC-20 (Ethereum): (address removed for privacy, please DM if you want to trade more)

USDC Polygon: (address removed for privacy, please DM if you want to trade more)

(Edit 23 June 3:45 PT): I'm only willing to bet assuming that AGI-created tech doesn't count for the purposes of this bet—it has to be something more supernatural than that.)

What if UFO are indeed really weird, but this will not shake LW belief system as it will be easily retrospectively explained: e.g. 'we always know that acausal cooperation between glitching streams in dust theory will produce Bayesian artifacts with low apriori probability but also unprovable in classical statistic sense'.

On further edit: apparently I'm a blind idiot and didn't see the clearly stated "5 year time horizon" despite actively looking for it. Sorry. I'll leave this here as a monument to my obliviousness, unless you prefer to delete it.

Without some kind of time limit, a bet doesn't seem well formed, and without a reasonably short time limit, it seems impractical.

No matter how small the chance that the bet will have to be paid, it has to be possible for it to be paid, or it's not a bet. Some entity has to have the money and be obligated to pay it out. Arranging for a bet to be paid at any time after their death would cost more than your counterparty would get out of the deal. Trying to arrange a perpetual trust that could always pay is not only grossly impractical, but actually illegal in a lot of places. Even informally asking people to hold money is really unreliable very far out. And an amount of money that could be meaningful to future people could end up tied up forever anyway, which is weird. Even trying to be sure to have the necessary money until death could be an issue.

I'm not really motivated to play, but as an example I'm statistically likely to die in under 25 years barring some very major life extension progress. I'm old for this forum, but everybody has an expiration date, including you yourself. Locating your heirs to pay them could be hard.

Deciding the bet can get hard, too. A recognizable Less Wrong community as such probably will not last even 25 years. Nor will Metaculus or whatever else. A trustee is not going to have the same judgement as the person who originally took your bet.

That's all on top of the more "tractable" long-term risks that you can at least value in somehow... like collapse of whatever currency the bet is denominated in, AI-or-whatever completely remaking the economy and rendering money obsolete, the Rapture, etc, etc.

... but at the same time, it doesn't seem like there's any particular reason to expect definitive information to show up within any adequately short time.

On edit: I bet somebody's gonna suggest a block chain. Those don't necessarily have infinite lives, either, and the oracle that has to tell the chain to pay out could disappear at any time. And money is still tied up indefinitely, which is the real problem with perpetuities.

Hm, I don't feel confident enough to place huge odds on none of these things being the answer (besides, the losses may appear deceptively smaller than they are; if you think $20,000 are a lot, try "$20,000 and having to explain to your wife why you lost $20,000 in a bet, all the while aliens may be attacking Earth"). I think the thing that really peeves me is running to "aliens" as the first exotic explanation as some do. If I witnessed something really unbelievable and seemingly breaking all laws of physics, and had plenty of evidence that it's not just an obvious trick or forgery, then my next question would be "is someone messing with my brain?". Because if we go into the realm of the seeming impossible, projecting hallucinations inside my brain via finely tuned electromagnetic fields or something seems still a lot more believable than aliens from outside the solar system to me.

I don't think I have enough of a post history to participate. If I did, I'd factor into my bet that there may be less impact to be had in a world with advanced aliens, at least if those aliens could subdue an earth-originated ASI. Therefor, money might be less instrumentally valuable in that world.

It strikes me that you're wearing a lot of risk beyond the face value bet. Even if we assume everyone is acting in good faith, there's likely credit risk across 10 different people promising a $100k+ payout (because most people don't have that much cash, and even among those who do, there's some likelihood of falling below that level of liquidity after a 5 year period). On your side, it looks like you're just sending people your side of the bet before resolution, so they wear zero credit risk, even though the credit risk on your end was smaller to begin with, because coming up with 5k is much more plausible (again, assuming good faith actors). There's also a time-value of money issue, where you paying now makes your side more valuable. To take the bet you made with Eliezer, you gave him $1k today, and he promised $150k if you pay out; that's actually about 117k in current dollars with 5-year risk-free interest rates around 5%. It might be better to bet in net-present-value terms.

Thank you for kickstarting an interesting discussion around this topic. I won't bet against you; I, too, think most LessWrongers dramatically underestimate the plausibility of the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

The UK's Project Condign concluded UAP were real and exotic, but were unknown natural atmospheric plasma phenomena (similar to the Hessdalen lights and reports of black or metallic-appearing ball lightning) generating electromagnetic fields that interact with human brains to induce psychedelic/out-of-body experiences (hence alien abduction and close encounter reports). Would this category of explanation (something that accounted for most or all weird aspects of the UFO phenomenon without being especially ontologically shocking in retrospect) count as "very weird," in your view?

I’m happy to bet $150k against your $1k, resolves as your bet with Eliezer. DM or email me: ms at contact dot ms

If you're still looking, I'd be happy to bet at 50:1, my $5k against your $100.

Leftovers of an ancient civilization 

Archaeologist here: you'd want to really, really narrow down on what you mean here, otherwise we will clean your pockets pretty easily. Since about 2016, new discoveries of ancient civilizations, predating the most reasonable estimates crop up like mushrooms.

My estimate is that we will have several proofs pushing the the origins of civilization at least 10k years backwards, if not more, in the very near future, likely along the vectors of:
- Gobeli Tepe and other Turkish/Anatolian ruins being significantly older than we thought.
- The Sphinx and some of the Egyptian stuff being significantly older than we thought.
- ruins in Indonesia that have a good chance to be proven older than all of the above.
- Pacific Connection (Australian Aboriginal People and some Sth American tribes being related) being confirmed, thus pushing the colonization of America at least 12k years further back, via boat no less.
- evidence that copper, iron and tin were smelted significantly earlier than we assumed.

In other words; current established estimate is that civilization as we know it is at best around 12k years old, and did not really kick off for real until 6k BCE. But we keep finding evidence that pushes that back at least to 25k BCE. We also keep finding evidence that both neanderthals and denisovians split much earlier than we thought, were much more numerous, and survived longer than assumed, so it is completely possible that there was a proto-civilisation 20k years before Sumer even existed, and that, conceivably, you could have Neanderthal humans witness it (or possibly participate?)

I am willing to bet 50:1 up to $20k. Would you be interested?

[EDIT] up to $20k on my side, not up $1M.

Do you use Manifold Markets? It already has UAP-related markets you can bet on, and you can create your own.

This pattern matches to anonymous person on the internet offering free money, which is typically a scam. Safer to pass, I think.

The LessWrong Review [? · GW] runs every year to select the posts that have most stood the test of time. This post is not yet eligible for review, but will be at the end of 2024. The top fifty or so posts are featured prominently on the site throughout the year.

Hopefully, the review is better than karma at judging enduring value. If we have accurate prediction markets on the review results, maybe we can have better incentives on LessWrong today. Will this post make the top fifty?

Is all the money gone by now? I'd be very happy to take a bet if not. 

Codyz bets Algon according to the terms of this post with 150:1 odds. 

Cody bets $120 USD that UFOs are prosaic against Ali's $18,000 USD that they are not. 

Cody sent the $120 USD today, 8/22/23, via Paypal. Ali to confirm receipt below. 

I am of the understanding that most users have putting down money against OP. I would like to join OP, with the same terms, for people who haven't got their bets filled. 

Willing to stake up to $100k in a 20:1 deal. If someone wants to put $200k down on the phenomenon as described above having fully prosaic explanations for example, I will deposit $10k into an escrow contract on Ethereum and have it be sent to a predefined address in 5 years if adjudicated as so. Will do this up to $100k deposited in the contract. Funds on the counterparty side must be shown as present, although I'm not requiring the amount be deposited into the escrow contract as well. 

I'm a different person starting a new bet [LW · GW] like this one. I'm looking for 150:1 odds for a 3 year time frame. I suspect people are less willing to make this bet today than they were in July.

Are you still open to taking bets?

Hey, this might be a little bit "last minute" considering the stuff tomorrow, but are you willing to do transfers with regular money instead of crypto?

I will also take this bet, on the side of /u/RatsWrongAboutUAP with exactly the same terms, with anyone who wants. I will pay you now, you pay me 150:1 if UFO are supernatural within the next 5 years. 

@RatsWrongAboutUAP [LW · GW] I'm willing to risk up to $20k at 50:1 odds (i.e. If you give me $400 now, I'll owe you $20k in 5 years if you win the bet) conditional on (1) you not being privy to any non-public information about UFOs/UAP and (2) you being okay with forfeiting any potential winnings in the unlikely event that I die before bet resolution.

Re (1): Could you state clearly whether you do or do not have non-public information pertaining to the bet?

Re (2): FYI The odds of me dying in the next 5 years are less than 3% by SSA base rates, and my credence is even less than that if we don't account for global or existential catastrophic risk. The reason I'd ask to not owe you any money in the worlds in which you win (and are still alive to collect money) and I'm dead is because I wouldn't want anyone else to become responsible for settling such a significant debt on my behalf.

If you accept, please reply here and send the money to this Bitcoin address: 3P6L17gtYbj99mF8Wi4XEXviGTq81iQBBJ

I'll confirm receipt of the money when I get notified of your reply here. Thanks!

I'd love to do this, but would have a hard time paying out because, for reasons beyond my control and caused by other people's irrationality, I'm on SSI (although that might change in a few years). In the US people can't save more than $2000 in liquid assets without losing their benefits, so I can't take much, and probably wouldn't be able to pay out because every transaction must be justified to the government, and although small purchases for entertainment would go through I'd have a hard time defending paying $1000 or whatever on a bet. Also, I've tried to work around this with crypto and lost all I paid in a scam.

I was thinking about just lying about what I could pay back, but being alienated by what seems to be the only sane and good community on the planet would be a much bigger cost. (Other people try to be sane and good, and the lesson I've learned is that "ethics" is what people talk about when they are about to make things worse for everyone except for the rationalist community).

I would also gamble 200:1 odds for up to $5000. I have a strong conviction that all UFOs are prosaic in nature and have held this conviction for longer than a decade at this point. 

Interested in my $100-200k against your $5-10k.

This is late but if betting is still available I think I'd take 1:60 odds.

In addition I am willing to reveal my identity (in private) and write an actual contract in the interest of creating a stronger sense of commitment and seriousness if you'd like that. I am also willing to return the exact sum at the end of the 5 years if we reach an "impasse" where you believe strong evidence has been provided that I do not recognize as such (for example, if belief in a supernatural origin for UFOs becomes common in the coming years for various reasons)

I am also very interested in your justifications for this bet. Are there any historical UFO "cases" that you find compelling?

EDIT: You can safely disregard the second paragraph of this, I misread the post initially. Still, the first applies.

In the event that you decide you're being stiffed, how will you quantify community sentiment on the issue to try and prove that the majority of the community believes in one of your categories of anomalous claims? Will you conduct a poll of some kind? Will you just say that you beg to differ?

Also, in the event that you're actually someone who has assessed that they don't want to be on LessWrong greater than 5 years from now anyway in the timeline where no substantial UFO/UAP evidence has surfaced by then, what would compel you to pay up instead of ghosting?

I said in a post to lsusr yesterday (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oY9HNicqGGihymnzk/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-retrieved-craft-of-non?commentId=od73EXuSL6uKLFfeD) that I would update the post today to address his concerns, but honestly im feeling very lazy and mostly disagree that its unclear what I'm trying to do. 

I will be picking some people and moving forward with the bets today. I will ensure with my counterparties that any individual concerns they have are addressed.

I am still open to betting with more people (and would love to do so!). 

To be clear, to resolve the bet in your favor, it has to be the case that:

a) We have >50% credence in "ontological shock" as you define it

and

b) UFOs/UAPs identified as of June 13 2023 are meaningfully a result of such "ontological shock" right?

(To be more explicit, I want to exclude scenarios like the following thing from being scored in your favor:
1. We discover novel philosophical arguments or empirical evidence that leads LessWrongers to believe we're on balance more likely to live in a simulation than not.

2. Causally, the UFOs are a result of simulations, because everything we experience is a result of simulations, including hot-air balloons). 

Anyway, happy to bet at 30:1 to up to $30k of my money, assuming that I don't have to commit the $ to a third-party and this is just like a standard bet. (I'm willing to bet at those odds for either nominal USD $s or inflation-adjusted $2023 USD, if you want a different way to denominate the bet please let me know and I'll think about it).

I'm sure that this time around, it's definitely real aliens. Or, barring that, magic or time travel.