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Eth: 0x1E9f00B7FF9699869f6E81277909115c11399296
Btc: bc1qegk25dy4kt2hgx0s6qla8gddv09cga874dr372
So far I have paid out $6164 and I stand to make $515,000 if I win. I appreciate your incentive offer.
Will reach out
I'm Currently on Vacation, I will follow up on this in a week
Glad to have made this bet with you!
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 do not have any non-public information about ufos/uap.
- Sure
Please verify reception of funds and confirm our bet https://blockstream.info/tx/ab7173abec208a6eda17bdf1b75668bc5e6efe46356f40109125a42962bfb9e2
Please confirm reception of funds https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0104a0005a62af25a86d9d3573c02e0715860309b3a66e1370efec7533b41ffa
No.
Awesome! DM me and we can figure out payment options
Sounds good to me! I will send $200 worth of bitcoin to this address sometime today
Because in absolute terms I would only have to put up $25. At the lower end I'm willing to be more flexible. I also just want to bet with more people. I've received a lot of offers in comments, but only 3 people have actually reached out and finalized bets with me.
Curious what your thoughts are now? Still mulling it over? I would like to make this bet, so please let me know if there are any further concerns you have.
Acceptable offer, reach out with payment details
Given your lack of history I would want much better odds and lower payment from my side, for you I would probably max at $500 and would want 200:1
Sure, reach out
Sure! Please reach out
Happy to make this bet!
Happy to make this bet!
The explanation still has to ultimately relate back to explaining uap.
Sure, lets bet. Reach out with means to receive payment
Anyone who is confident no ufos are truly anomalous, please feel free to extend me odds for a bet here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/t5W87hQF5gKyTofQB/ufo-betting-put-up-or-shut-up
I have already paid out to two betters so far, and would like some more
Glad we could make this bet!
Glad we could make this bet!
That's a reasonable concern. My concern is that without some principal to avoid it, that would just mean that everyone waits out the full 5 years even if its clear I'm the winner.
I wouldn't mind giving a window of a month for things to settle before there's a duty to settle. I would still demand that if anyones credence ever goes >50% that they still have to register that publicly (or at least to me)
Correct, accepted at payment time. If you need more time to think it over, no problem.
Interesting edge case. I would ask that if you at any point became >50% within the time horizon, that you would proactively reach out in short order.
Yes! If you have any concerns over terms/resolution please let me know. Otherwise reach out with means to receive payment
I like the odds and appreciate the offer, but these terms do not interest me.
Good enough for me
This is more than acceptable for me. Please reach out for a way for me to pay you.
Mere government hoax/psyop with no accompanying reality to non-prosaic uap would NOT resolve in my favor, no issue from me on that.
In a world where a sizeable fraction of LW becomes convinced I might win the bet, I would expect that I then wouldn't have to wait very long before it then became conclusive, so I wouldn't mind just waiting that out. If in that case, we then hit time horizon constraints before it was definitive to you, then depending on the specifics I definitely would not rule out appealing to the community (or specific 'trusted' individuals like Scott Alexander or Eliezer). I find this scenario unlikely to come to pass. I would of course in all cases commit to operating with you in good faith.
If you wish to extend that offer, I indeed will accept 50:1 (max bet size?). If you have any other concerns please let me know.
Wish to bet on it?
Double the odds and I will accept immediately. Otherwise I might accept in the next few days depending on if I get more offers or not. I have reached out to others now and I expect when its confirmed that I really am giving out money, that more offers will come in.
Correct, I'm not trying to collect on something like that. I would in the case of a simulation only if it was also the case that the ufos were something unique and specific (ie, actual glitches, or something expressly put in by the programmers) as opposed to being trivially true in the way that you mention.
Correct, you do not have to commit the money to any third party, you merely have to affirm that you will pay out in the event that I win.
At the moment 30:1 is less than I would prefer, if in the next few days I do not get enough new offers then I might take you up on this. 50:1 is currently the lowest I have accepted.
Rare counterexample
I'm afraid you are going to lose this bet. So long as people come can up with a bitcoin/eth address or a paypal account, there will be no issues.
If/when it comes out that ufos are legitimately weird, I would be very surprised to see anything other than utter bewilderment from most of LW, I don't expect clear resolution in my favor to be an issue.
LW's with a reputation are a far cry from random internet strangers. I made the bet terms as such to be as frictionless and minimum downside for my counterparties as possible to try and eliminate as many concerns as possible, I do want to make bets afterall.
If I get stiffed I'd be pretty surprised, but I take that risk knowingly.
Let us move forward!
I commit to operating in good faith with you, and I obviously take as a given that you will do the same. If you have any other concerns please let me know. Otherwise please provide (either publicly or privately) a means for me to pay you. We can then both confirm here that we have begun our bet.
This is the best offer so far! I would love to enter into this bet with you.
I would be perfectly happy with either of those methods of resolution in the event there's a disagreement. In that event I would be happy for you to more or less entirely dictate the specifics of that process. I commit to operating in good faith with you, and I obviously take as a given that you will do the same.
If you have any other concerns please let me know. Otherwise please provide (either publicly or privately) a means for me to pay you. We can then both confirm here that we have begun our bet.
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!).
I will update the post tomorrow and add more detail to address the other concerns
Enticing offer. Barring better odds and max payout offer that would eat up my budget, I would like I go forward with this. I will wait to see what offers come in first.
I know I have no post history, and thus these are just words, but I claim to be a reasonable, rational person who (tries) to operates exclusively in good faith. I've been a lurker of LW and LW adjacent people for a few years now. I learned about lesswrong because I stumbled across eilizers work on decision theories and then subsequently got agi-safety-pilled. I considered myself a "standard materialist atheist" my entire adult life and most of my childhood.
Most of your concerns seemed to ignore that the explanations have to ultimately trace back to explaining ufo cases or are otherwise very pedantic. Yes ancient civ's have ruins, yes dinosaurs might have been agrarian, but do either of those address uap cases today? I only win the bet if my counterparty thinks so (or LW does).
I tried in good faith to try and cut at the seems of the two world models (all prosaic, not all prosaic) as best I could. I gave multiple lexical tests to make clear what kinds of things I have in mind.
I have no intention of getting into nasty disagreements over resolution. But I agree it would be good to have the adjudication method be explicit, though I'm not sure how best to do that. In a world in which I win the bet, I figured I would be making a big post anyways laying out a bit more about me and some of this stuff. If prominent voices contest my win then I would stand down from collecting. I expect a world in which I win is also a world in which LW is pretty unanimous that I won.
You're right, I forgot to mention the nontrivial post history in my post, an oversight on my part. That said I was only ever going to engage with people with established reputations because obviously. I reserved the right to choose who to bet with.
I have created a post for this bet https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/t5W87hQF5gKyTofQB/ufo-betting-put-up-or-shut-up
I have created a post for my bet https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/t5W87hQF5gKyTofQB/ufo-betting-put-up-or-shut-up
I have created a post for this bet https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/t5W87hQF5gKyTofQB/ufo-betting-put-up-or-shut-up
I have created a post here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/t5W87hQF5gKyTofQB/ufo-betting-put-up-or-shut-up
Fair enough. What kinds of changes would you suggest for the list? My goal is to find at least one person on LW to make a bet with me, so I welcome feedback
I assume you mean the central example, some indisputably organic entities arriving from another star system on something indisputably like a "spacecraft"
Extraterrestrial in origin, biological or otherwise (their autonomous probes, for instance).
Hmm, I don't even know how to identify something like that.
Example of what resolution in my favor might look like: In 5 years time we are looking back and saying "Damn, I cant believe some ufos were actually demons this whole time. Wild"
In general, what I'm trying to bet on is the world and rationalist community experiencing some significant ontological shock. If the community stops, melts, and catches fire, I win the bet.
For instance, if some form of undiscovered bat or sea creature is actually good at flying and that explains the images, does that count as "very weird"? That is, it's not an animal that can design technologies, but it is the cause of a bunch of the UFO reportings.
If a skeptic/debunker would feel smug and vindicated about any given explanation, then that explanation would NOT resolve in my favor. Weird animal (As mentioned, barring that they aren't secretly on par with humans), is prosaic and would NOT resolve in my favor.
Also "psychic phenomenon" seems kind of ill-defined. Derren Brown can do hypnosis and seances that have strong effects on people, there's a lot of suggestibility in people, if a bunch of UFO sighting were due to someone doing similar things but even better and naturally, does that count as psychic phenomena?
Merely advanced "mentalist" type stuff would NOT count. This class is more pointing at "true" psychic phenomena. ie, something more like ESP, remote viewing, astral projection, etc.
Regarding the hypotheses, I'd probably want to determine now some set of LW posters to resolve it if we disagree. My first guess is that Oliver Habryka, Alyssa Vance, and Vaniver could be good, where if any of them think the bet resolves in your favor then it does.
I lurk, but not closely enough to know what handles would be good for this bet. Ill accept this list, and also throw in Scott Alexander and Eliezer.