0:02 Many times in my life, it has seemed
0:04 like it might be aliens. The wow signal,
0:06 the face on Mars, Taby's star, and the
0:08 rhythmic timing of pulsars. But in all
0:10 of these cases, it has turned out to not
0:12 be aliens. And I want to understand why.
0:15 Why is it so far never aliens? And I
0:16 think I have a pretty good explanation.
0:18 And if we understand that explanation,
0:20 it will be easier to know when it
0:23 actually is aliens, if that ever
0:25 happens. To start out, I do want there
0:27 to be aliens. I want them to come down
0:29 from space and tell us things that we
0:31 will never otherwise know in our
0:32 lifetimes. Their mere existence would
0:34 tell us that we are not alone. That
0:36 there is other intelligent life in the
0:38 universe and even more importantly that
0:39 it can overcome the tremendous distance
0:41 between the stars and even more than
0:44 that intelligent [music] species can
0:47 survive their own fragility. I would
0:48 like to know that and I want to be here
0:50 for a big spectacular moment. Something
0:52 that could either be good or bad but is
0:54 definitely big. I know that about
0:55 myself. Even if it's not something that
0:57 I feel great about, I want there to be
1:00 more. I want it to be big and I want to
1:01 make that YouTube video. [music] So, I
1:03 pay attention when it might be aliens.
1:05 And there have been a lot of times since
1:07 I started watching the X Files in the
1:09 mid '9s when it seemed like something
1:11 big might be coming. I could make a
1:12 video called 20 times we thought we
1:15 found aliens and not run low on case
1:17 studies. Recently, Avibe, an
1:19 astrophysicist at Harvard, has been
1:21 talking about how Threeey Atlas, the
1:22 third interplanetary object ever
1:25 detected by humans, has a roughly 40%
1:27 chance of being alien technology. He
1:29 also said before this that there was a
1:31 good chance that Umuam Mua, the first
1:32 interstellar object ever detected by
1:34 humans, was alien tech. Call me crazy,
1:38 but since something like 99.99999%
1:39 of all of the objects in our solar
1:42 system are rocks, it would be weird if
1:43 the moment our tools became
1:44 sophisticated enough to detect
1:45 interstellar [music]
1:48 objects, one or even two of the first
1:50 three we detected were something other
1:52 than rocks. So yeah, I do think that we
1:55 will find that threeey atlas is a rock.
1:57 And this will be another case where
2:00 maybe its aliens turned out to not be
2:01 aliens. So I think there's a reason why
2:03 it's never aliens. And it's different
2:05 from the fact that they're not around.
2:07 That's separate. We're not talking about
2:09 that. What we're talking about is that
2:11 people will propose that it might be
2:13 aliens a lot and then it turns out to
2:15 never be aliens. So why is that
2:16 happening? I think that there are
2:17 reasons. I think that there is something
2:20 special about the alien hypothesis as an
2:22 explanation for something. And that
2:24 special thing or those special things is
2:26 resulting in it being proposed a lot
2:28 more frequently than it probably should
2:30 be. I have a few thoughts. I'm sure
2:31 other people will have more, but I'm
2:33 [music] going to start with one that I
2:36 personally suffer from the most. I know
2:38 that I want aliens to visit us, and I
2:41 know that must be true of other people.
2:43 And if we want something to happen, we
2:45 will look for reasons it might be
2:47 happening. Basically, there's a reason
2:48 why the most iconic image from the
2:50 X-Files is Fox Moulder's poster that
2:54 says, "I want to believe. Believe, not
2:55 know." I think you could see this in
2:57 this shot. I I I made a whole t-shirt
2:59 about this. This is so important. The
3:01 tools and structures of science do not
3:03 exist to eliminate bias from humans
3:05 because that is impossible. They exist
3:08 to get better information despite those
3:10 biases. We accept that the biases are
3:12 real and we create systems to work
3:14 around them. So there's this Carl Sean
3:15 quote that gets trotted out during
3:18 conversations about aliens or life on
3:20 other planets. Extraordinary claims
3:22 require extraordinary evidence. that I
3:24 love this, but it has become a bit
3:26 cliche and that risks having people
3:28 think that it's dogma rather than just
3:30 like good policy. And I actually think
3:32 that it's good policy for several
3:34 distinct reasons. One is the way that I
3:36 think Carl actually meant it. If
3:37 something aligns with a bunch of stuff
3:39 that we have known before and seen
3:41 before, in other words, it's ordinary,
3:43 not extraordinary. The level of scrutiny
3:45 that must be applied before accepting it
3:47 is simply not that high. both because we
3:50 know what to look for and because we
3:52 know that it's possible. For example, if
3:54 scientists were to discover a new small
3:56 moon of Jupiter, the barrier to
3:58 accepting that evidence would be
4:00 relatively low. We know what moons of
4:02 Jupiter look like. We know how they act.
4:04 And we know that there are lots of other
4:06 small moons of Jupiter. But if the claim
4:08 is extraordinary, then that means that
4:11 we have fewer tools and less experience
4:13 identifying a phenomenon. And also, we
4:16 have no idea how likely or even possible
4:18 that claimed phenomenon is. So, if
4:20 someone says there's a spaceship
4:21 orbiting Jupiter, that's going to
4:23 deserve more scrutiny. Both because it
4:25 would be much weirder and because we
4:28 don't know how to confirm the existence
4:30 of spaceships because we've never done
4:32 it before. We know how to detect moons.
4:34 We've seen them lots. We don't know how
4:36 to detect spaceships. We've never seen
4:38 them. But there's a second way I think
4:40 Sean's quote is good. The claim isn't
4:42 only out of the ordinary, but if we want
4:45 it to be true, we have to be even more
4:48 careful. And scientists want to discover
4:50 extraordinary things, they want to turn
4:52 everything on its head. That's how you
4:55 win a Nobel Prize. And that can happen.
4:57 It does happen. But when it comes to
5:00 extraordinary claims, both the bias of
5:02 wanting to discover something amazing
5:05 and the lack of skill and experience we
5:07 have with that discovery means that more
5:10 scrutiny must be applied to the claims
5:11 and the evidence. And if the evidence
5:15 wins out, amazing. Extraordinary claims
5:17 don't require us to turn around and
5:19 ignore them, but they do require more
5:21 scrutiny. The case of Professor Loe is a
5:24 remarkable one here. He obviously knows
5:26 more than I do, but he also says that
5:28 ThreeI Atlas's trajectory is extremely
5:31 specific. It's quite in line with the
5:33 plane of the solar system and it's
5:35 heading into the interior of the solar
5:37 system. And that he says is just very
5:38 unlikely. There are so many other
5:40 directions this thing could be moving
5:42 in. And that for him is a piece of
5:44 evidence in favor of the idea that this
5:47 is something possibly sent specifically
5:49 to explore [music] our solar system. He
5:51 thinks this is something we need to pay
5:52 attention to because it could be a
5:54 threat to our civilization. And to that
5:56 I say it would be weird if the
5:58 civilizational threat showed up the
6:00 moment we had the technology to detect
6:01 it rather than I think a better
6:03 explanation of now that we have the
6:04 technology to detect these things,
6:06 [music] we are able to detect them and
6:08 they probably come around fairly
6:10 regularly. But even more to the point of
6:12 this very specific trajectory, I assume
6:15 that Professor Loe knows that Atlas, the
6:17 telescope that discovered ThreeI Atlas,
6:19 was designed by astronomers to detect
6:22 rocks that could potentially hit Earth.
6:23 Those rocks are, of course, almost
6:24 entirely inside of the plane of the
6:27 solar system. And thus, that's where the
6:29 Atlas telescope looks. Atlas is looking
6:31 for objects inside [music] the plane of
6:33 the solar system. So, it is extremely
6:36 unsurprising that the object it spotted
6:37 is inside of the plane of the solar
6:39 system. And so here is our first reason
6:41 stated more clearly. If you want
6:42 something to be true, you will
6:45 unconsciously accept weaker evidence and
6:48 [music] interpret weird data as being in
6:50 favor of your hypothesis. And that is
6:53 one reason why it's never aliens.
6:55 Because people are biased to believe
6:56 they might be seeing something
6:58 historically important because that
7:00 would be very cool. But because they
7:02 have that bias, the number of times they
7:04 have thought it might be aliens is just
7:06 higher than it should be. And this goes
7:08 beyond Harvard astronomers to, you know,
7:10 congressmen and air force pilots and all
7:13 the rest of us. UFO influencers do this
7:15 constantly. The best evidence for UFOs
7:18 is always the thing that hasn't yet been
7:20 disproved. Then when that piece of
7:22 evidence gets disproved, they move on to
7:24 another video or credible sounding
7:26 eyewitness report. But whenever there
7:28 are videos, the ones that are the best
7:30 evidence are always, for whatever
7:33 reason, the blurriiest. As an example, I
7:34 recently did a video about this balloon
7:36 that was hit by a missile off the coast
7:37 of Yemen. And I said in that video that
7:39 it was the only piece of video evidence
7:41 presented during this congressional
7:43 hearing. And that was kind of true, but
7:45 some folks yelled at me about it because
7:47 they said there was another video and it
7:48 was actually the better piece of
7:51 evidence. But that video is just a video
7:53 of a blurry heat signature probably
7:54 coming out of the back of a distant jet.
7:57 And yeah, I was ignoring that video
7:59 because it's terrible evidence. The
8:01 video shows nothing that couldn't be
8:02 explained in a bunch of other ways,
8:04 which is why it wasn't the thing that
8:05 the media was talking about. The media
8:06 was talking about the weather balloon
8:08 video because it looked weirder. The
8:10 point is, if you want to start to prove
8:12 something, you need evidence that would
8:14 persuade not just you, but the skeptical
8:17 version of you who does not want to
8:19 believe, but wants instead to know. I
8:20 thought this might be a good time to
8:22 break in and tell you about the fact
8:23 that I designed this. You could watch I
8:25 put it on the screen right now. You can
8:26 watch me design it. There's a part where
8:28 I thought I might put a bunch of colors
8:30 in. I worked hard on that, but then I I
8:32 decided not to do that. I can't get far
8:34 enough away from my camera there. It's
8:36 the I want to believe from the XF with a
8:37 weather balloon, but instead of I want
8:38 to believe, it says I want to know. And
8:40 you could pre-order that shirt for the
8:42 next week and then never again because
8:44 it's busy time at the warehouse. So, we
8:45 can't keep it open for too long. So,
8:47 this is your first and last warning if
8:48 you want that. We take all the
8:49 pre-orders and then we end the pre-order
8:50 and then we make the exact number that
8:52 were ordered. And that's a great vibe
8:53 because we don't make too much, we don't
8:54 make too few. We got to do this one
8:56 really quick because the warehouse is
8:57 about to get very busy with Christmas
8:58 stuff. So, it's just a weekl long
8:59 pre-order this time. All right, back to
9:00 the video.
9:02 >> Professor Loe clearly wants there to be
9:04 aliens, and that's a real problem that
9:07 has led to him thinking it's aliens a
9:09 lot of times. But this is not the only
9:11 problem. There are others. And this next
9:13 one is [music] the most common one I see
9:15 in like normal everyday people. Not
9:18 knowing what's going on is super common
9:20 and normal. Sometimes people will show
9:22 me a video and say, "How do you explain
9:25 this?" And my answer will be like I mean
9:28 I don't know what's going on there. I
9:29 don't have an explanation. And that will
9:32 be seen by many as an admission that it
9:35 is aliens or something supernatural. But
9:39 unexplained stuff is normal. For 99.999%
9:41 of human history, we had no idea what
9:43 lightning was. The sky would just
9:45 explode during storms. We still don't
9:48 precisely know how lightning works. When
9:51 America was founded, everyone knew that
9:53 if you held your breath long enough, you
9:57 would die. And no one, no one on earth
9:59 had any idea why. And because this was
10:02 so obviously important and so
10:04 mysterious, it was seen as a link with
10:06 the supernatural. Accepting an
10:08 explanation for a mystery without any
10:11 evidence is totally understandable, but
10:13 it does not usually lead you anywhere
10:15 close to the truth. What really leads to
10:17 truth is accepting the mystery.
10:20 Unexplained is the default state.
10:21 Everything we know is something we
10:23 figured out. No one told us any of this
10:25 stuff. When I see a video that I can't
10:29 explain, that feels to me normal. Very
10:30 normal because I know that there are
10:32 unexplained phenomena hiding under every
10:33 rock in science. When you see a science
10:35 news story, like just open up any
10:37 science news and what you will see is
10:39 people providing explanations for things
10:42 that were unknown and unexplained
10:44 yesterday. So, it's just not surprising
10:46 when people start showing around things
10:49 that no one has a good explanation for.
10:51 And many times I have watched as
10:54 something that seemed unexplainable
10:55 gets explained. You have more
10:57 unexplained phenomena in your colon than
10:59 there are contained in 10,000 UFO
11:01 videos. The reason we focus on the UFO
11:03 videos is because they tap into our
11:06 desire for big important mysterious
11:08 things. But the absence of an
11:11 understanding does not require an
11:13 explanation. It begs it. It makes us
11:15 want it. It makes us drive to look for
11:18 it. But it is so common for there to be
11:20 mysteries that don't have explanations.
11:22 Sometimes there are just things that we
11:25 don't know for now. And then hopefully
11:27 sometimes we figure them out. These
11:29 interstellar objects are another great
11:31 example of this. AmuA Mua and threei
11:33 Atlas both have behaved quite
11:35 differently than objects we have
11:37 cataloged from our solar system. And you
11:39 can look at that and you can say that is
11:41 really weird. We don't have any reason
11:43 why this rock would look like that or
11:46 act like that. So, aliens, and I
11:47 honestly get that if you're not a
11:50 trained scientist, but I'm baffled when
11:52 it comes from trained scientists. Like,
11:54 they're weird compared to what? Compared
11:57 to other interstellar objects? No, we
11:58 don't have anything to compare them to.
12:00 We've seen three. This is the third
12:02 interstellar rock we've seen, and it's
12:03 the one that we have by far the best
12:05 data on. The fact that it's not acting
12:07 like rocks from our solar system is very
12:09 cool, but it's not like surprising. It
12:11 might have been traveling through space
12:12 for 10 billion years. Like, I don't know
12:14 what kind of star system it comes from.
12:16 I don't know how it was formed. We don't
12:17 know anything about this. This is
12:19 entirely new stuff. This is very
12:20 exciting. The fact that it seems
12:22 different from objects in our solar
12:24 system indicates that we're likely about
12:27 to have a huge boom in our understanding
12:29 of the universe by studying rocks from
12:31 distant star systems. Now, it could have
12:32 been that they'd all be like rocks from
12:34 around here, so there'd be nothing to
12:35 learn. It's exciting that it's
12:37 different, but thinking that the third
12:39 interstellar rock is so weird that it
12:42 might be aliens is textbook, I don't
12:44 understand, thus maybe aliens. There's
12:47 no reason to go from some amount of
12:50 confusion to I've got an explanation I
12:51 want to talk to people about when data
12:54 is still pouring in and all that data is
12:56 brand new. When we leap very easily from
12:58 I don't know what's going on here to
13:01 maybe it's aliens, we overindex on that
13:03 explanation and that results in it very
13:06 frequently being maybe aliens, but so
13:08 far never being actually aliens. And
13:10 look, I honestly think that these first
13:12 two reasons why we hit aliens as an
13:14 explanation so often are totally
13:16 understandable and normal instincts of
13:18 humans, which is why they are both
13:20 instincts that the processes of science
13:22 put some brakes on. But there's also, I
13:24 think, an understandable instinct that
13:26 says, "Look, it's never been aliens. It
13:27 never will be aliens. And oh my god,
13:29 will you shut up about the aliens?" And
13:31 we also need to be careful about that.
13:33 Aliens are not a supernatural idea.
13:36 Obviously, technology can exist. It
13:37 exists on our planet. So, there may be
13:39 alien technology, and it may someday be
13:41 the right answer. As long as the aliens
13:44 hypothesis isn't shutting down an
13:45 interest in more data collection and
13:47 discussion, I think it might be a little
13:50 distracting, but mostly fine. But yeah,
13:52 because we want it to be aliens and
13:54 because we are uncomfortable with not
13:56 knowing things and aliens are good at
13:58 explaining anything confusing. It is so
14:01 often brought up to much media fanfare
14:03 before being quickly disproven. But the
14:04 last thing on my list is a related
14:06 phenomenon that I actually really
14:08 dislike and I think is often used to
14:10 actively manipulate people and can
14:13 sometimes cause us to become stuck on
14:16 the explanation even when it must be
14:18 discarded. This is very common among UFO
14:20 influencers. We just discussed how we
14:22 often move from I don't know what this
14:24 is to maybe this is aliens and that is
14:26 because aliens can basically do
14:29 anything. So any evidence can be
14:31 explained by aliens. Any confusion in
14:33 the skies, anything that looks a little
14:34 bit weird, whether that's above our
14:36 heads or in the pyramids of Giza, maybe
14:39 aliens did that can explain it. But one
14:41 thing that can also be explained by
14:44 aliens and often is is a lack of
14:46 evidence for aliens. Why do we have no
14:49 good pictures of aliens? Well, because
14:51 the aliens are hiding from us and they
14:53 have extremely advanced technology. This
14:55 trick can be used to prevent any
14:57 evidence in opposition to the hypothesis
15:00 from being accepted. And hopefully you
15:01 could see the problem there. Once
15:02 something does not have to explain the
15:04 known laws of physics, it can explain
15:06 anything. And we need to be very
15:08 cautious with explanations that can
15:10 explain anything. If an alien can appear
15:13 or vanish instantly, redirect a hellfire
15:15 missile, erase people's memories, and
15:17 violate conservation of energy, then
15:19 there is no thing that aliens can't
15:22 explain, including the fact that as the
15:24 number of cameras on Earth has increased
15:26 by five orders of magnitude, the number
15:28 of credible photographs of aliens or
15:31 UFOs has not increased. We don't know
15:33 why Uranus spins on its side. That is a
15:35 mystery phenomenon, but aliens can
15:37 explain that. They have infinite
15:39 abilities and powers. They can travel
15:41 between the stars. Maybe that is the
15:43 reason why Uranus spins on its side. And
15:45 this is the biggest problem. If you
15:47 settle on an explanation that can
15:50 explain anything, we stop looking for
15:51 other explanations. You stop being able
15:53 to hear people who disagree with you.
15:55 And every time we have done that, every
15:59 time we stop learning. I don't want to
16:01 believe. I want to know. And the unlock
16:04 of science is not accepting things as
16:07 true until they have stood up to intense
16:09 scrutiny. When UFO videos are subjected
16:11 to scrutiny, the subreddits and the
16:12 Congress people, they get up in arms and
16:14 they say they're being silenced. No,
16:16 that's how this works. The mainstream
16:19 media wants to cover this. Congress
16:21 wants to talk about it. YouTube viewers
16:23 want to watch the videos. The reason
16:25 your views aren't mainstream is that
16:27 your ideas don't stand up to the level
16:29 of scrutiny applied to a senior
16:31 biochemistry thesis. The alien
16:33 hypothesis has been raised many many
16:35 times and it has never stood up to
16:38 scrutiny. That indicates that some
16:40 combination of our biases is resulting
16:42 in this hypothesis being raised too
16:44 quickly and too frequently. And that
16:47 doesn't surprise me at all because I
16:50 want there to be aliens. And yet in the
16:51 minds of many people for whom
16:53 unexplained phenomena can be explained
16:56 by aliens, the lack of direct evidence
16:59 of aliens is also explained by aliens.
17:00 You see the problem with this? It's an
17:02 idea that is impervious to critique.
17:04 Aliens as an explanation for something
17:06 is appealing because it is exciting and
17:09 unknown and on the edge of discovering a
17:10 literal god. So there's a strong
17:13 incentive to want to believe. The alien
17:15 hypothesis also solves the problem of
17:17 things we don't know, the mysteries we
17:19 can't solve. And look, I haven't really
17:20 talked about this yet, but the alien
17:23 hypothesis can also deliver attention,
17:25 ad revenue, video views, and book sales.
17:27 And it can explain any evidence very
17:29 quickly with very little thought,
17:31 including a lack of other evidence you
17:34 would expect if the hypothesis were
17:35 true. And once you get that deep, the
17:37 alien hypothesis isn't just
17:39 unfalsifiable, it is actively corrosive
17:42 to inquiry. It turns a failed prediction
17:44 into a confirmation, and it shuts down
17:47 the search for other answers. You could
17:48 see how I would dislike this. It seems
17:50 to me that people often believe that
17:52 accepting aliens as an explanation for
17:54 something unexplained is somehow
17:57 countercultural or brave. And I kind of
17:59 get that. Like I feel the pull of that
18:01 because it has so often not been aliens.
18:03 People like me do default to hearing
18:05 maybe it's aliens and immediately
18:08 thinking it's never aliens. And so often
18:09 times the more time people have spent
18:12 with us, the more likely they are to
18:14 immediately discount a perspective. And
18:16 that means that like the elites are
18:18 disagreeing. The elites are saying no,
18:19 no, no. And that can feel bad. And
18:21 there's all kinds of mechanisms at work
18:23 here that are, you know, in addition to
18:24 the biases I've already discussed, but
18:26 we don't need to get into everything
18:28 [music] today. But the point is like
18:30 someday I might hear people say maybe
18:32 this is aliens and I'm going to think to
18:35 myself, it's never aliens. But someday,
18:38 someday that might happen and I might be
18:41 wrong. But by understanding why so far
18:42 it's never been aliens, despite the fact
18:44 that often times people have said maybe
18:47 it's aliens, hopefully we can avoid
18:49 defaulting to that explanation every
18:50 time something seems weird while keeping
18:53 the door to that hypothesis open if we
18:55 encounter a situation where it looks
18:57 like it's probably aliens. I don't like
19:00 it when things are unexplained. My mind
19:03 wants to see that puzzle completed. It
19:05 is unsatisfying. It is makes me
19:07 offkilter. But more than that, I want
19:09 the fireworks, the big moment that
19:11 rewrites our place in the cosmos. But
19:14 the actual brave thing here is wanting
19:17 the truth more than we want any of that
19:19 stuff. And the first step, the necessary
19:23 first step to uncovering truth is to not
19:25 know. It is to be uncertain. We have
19:27 never uncovered any truth without
19:30 [music] that first step of uncertainty.
19:33 The more you want to believe, the more
19:36 you lose the opportunity to someday
19:45 Again, 7 days from upload, this will no
19:46 longer be available. Thank you for
19:48 watching the video.
19:50 No [music] connections. This is long
