BYP Responds - UFO Warp Drive? Let's Bayes It!

[00:00:00]BYP responds coming at you. Hopefully it's not going to rain on me. Clouds are coming in. Um, I've been doing some B theorem analysis on both the Iran war and the Ukraine war. I'm going to give you the quick summation and then I'll get into this interesting theory on a UFO propulsion drive that has been proposed on Jesse Michaels by a theoretical physicist named Max. Very cool subject.

[00:00:29]the Ukraine war. Ukraine is not winning.

[00:00:34]Uh Russia vastly outnumbers the Ukrainian missiles. But what Ukraine has done is it's brought forward the drone warfare aspect of this.

[00:00:50]They can make tens of thousands of drones a month easily and they're doing so.

[00:01:01]They are at this point shooting far more drones at Russia than Russia is shooting at them. The problem is the Russian missiles are so vastly superior in power and they outnumber Ukraine at least 10 to one. So the war is a protracted war, but the Ukraine army is at this point holding its own. [snorts] With the Iran war, the United States is so vastly superior in military power that there's no way they can lose except for one problem.

[00:01:40]the geography of Iran and the nature of the warfare, the drone warfare that Iran is fighting has made this so that instead of a quick win, it's going to end up being a long protracted out war.

[00:02:03]And at this point, Iran holds the cards.

[00:02:09]Whoever you're for, doesn't matter. The basian theorem at this point in time says all the evidence shows Iran has closed the straight of Hormuz and that is their nuclear weapon and they are able to continually respond to strikes that the United States makes against Iran.

[00:02:33]Iran in turn can respond hitting and destroying more of the United States bases in the entire Gulf region.

[00:02:44]So the war is going to end up being a long protracted war. It's going to cost hundreds of billions. This alone economically is going to be completely disastrous if not just for the United States, for the rest of the world.

[00:03:03]because now the Red Sea has also been closed.

[00:03:10]And that's that's a horror. Nothing is being shipped out of the Middle East from either the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea. So this is serious situation. Now, to get to the fun subject that I looked at, uh, I did an analysis of Jesse Michael's guest. It was a 22minute clip, wonderful clip on the propulsion system that he proposes UFOs could have. Now, this is all fun and games because we're trying to analyze various ways of how logically, how reasonably, how uh physically could the UFOs actually get here if they're from outer space, right? And so, this is interesting. I want to share my analysis with you. So, and this is exactly the kind of thing that B theorem is made for without question. Max the physicist also says near the end of the discussion he says it's a probabilistic cumulative case. That's right. That's my slogan now. Absolutely. This is precisely the way to look at this. So, first, what are we actually evaluating?

[00:04:33]This is crucial because we're not asking does general relativity allow warp drives. That is not the question here. We don't care at this point because the hour the the answer is essentially yes it does but only mathematically.

[00:04:54]So that's not the issue. Warp drives are on the table for UFO propulsion systems. Cool. Really cool. What we are asking is can negative energy exist?

[00:05:10]Again, yes, it really can. But it's in tiny quantum effects like the Casmir effect. So instead of asking those two questions because mathematically and physically in a small way these already exist. So that's cool. The question we have to ask is do the claims in this interview substantially increase the probability that UFOs currently use engineered warp drive propulsion? That's the question we want to ask and that's a very different question from the other ones. So here's the hypothesis. Some UFOs are engineered craft using space-time metric engineering that is a warp drive.

[00:06:00]Everything else is evidence. So our prior probability what we believe based on everything we know before we even look at any of the evidence whatsoever.

[00:06:11]What's our belief? Are we skeptical? Do we believe it? Do we believe it strongly? Do we maybe say, "Yeah, it could be, etc." What is our prior?

[00:06:23]And this is where the fireworks begins because suppose we're already willing to grant that genuine anomalous UFOs exist, which I am willing to grant. But the specific propulsion system, see, that's a whole different angle here. So, we're in the extreme speculative, but we understand that. So, we're gonna play tonight with this.

[00:06:49]We could start with 5%.

[00:06:52]Maybe 10%, but we want to start with a small prior probability for one thing because we simply just have never seen a warp drive, but it would be cool if there was one, right? So, yeah, we'll say 5%, we're going to stay conservative at this point. Now, the prior odds then are 0.05 05 divided by 95 which is the 5% and that gives us 0.053.

[00:07:21]Okay, so that's our prior. Notice that's not our answer. That's just what we're beginning with. Then we look at evidence number one. So general relativity mathematically permits warp drives. So this is true. Alcuber demonstrated it.

[00:07:40]The physicist is completely correct here on Jesse Michael's program, but does this strongly favor the UFO hypothesis?

[00:07:48]Well, I mean, not not enormously.

[00:07:51]And our question for that is why not?

[00:07:55]Why not enormously? [snorts] Because many mathematical solutions in general relativity almost certainly never actually occur in nature. Yes, it's in the equation, but that doesn't mean it's also in nature. That has to be seen, demonstrated, understood, experienced, so on and so forth. Right?

[00:08:18]So, some examples are white holes. We've never seen white holes. Uh naked singularities, we have no idea what one would look like. Traversible wormholes.

[00:08:29]We have no idea in the world if those are even real or even if they can be.

[00:08:34]Even though the mathematics says if you tinker and manipulate algebraically with general relativity mathematics, these are some of the really interesting exotic astronomical possibilities that may be out there in our fabulous universe, but it's not solid. So they're permitted, but nature may not. Mathematically, they're permitted. That doesn't mean they're real. So the likelihood ratio I would put at two. Nice evidence, but not spectacular. The odds are 0.053* 2. Now we're making the odds, which is 106 probability, which gives us 9.6%.

[00:09:22]So, we're slowly moving up as we ex as we examine the evidence either mathematically or physically out there in the universe. Right now, we've just got mathematics, so our probability hasn't jumped up enormously high just yet. So, our second point of evidence is warp drives require no reaction mass.

[00:09:47]What's that mean?

[00:09:49]And this does match many UFO observations.

[00:09:55]Now, I bet you're really wondering what is no reaction mass. Absolutely. There is no exhaust. There is no sonic boom when so many UFOs are seen. There is extreme acceleration. In many cases, there is hovering, silent movement. And this is genuinely interesting. But [sighs] again, many speculative propulsion ideas are predicted those things.

[00:10:28]They did predict those things. So it's not unique evidence. So the likelihood ratio is 2. When we run the odds, 106* 2 gives us. 212. And that bumps it up to a 17% probability. So it's growing. What's the third evidence we have? Okay.

[00:10:51]Negative energy exists. That's correct.

[00:10:54]The Casemir effect. Quantum vacuum.

[00:10:57]Again, this is absolutely legitimate physics that this guy is talking about.

[00:11:02]But the leap itself is astronomical.

[00:11:07]Really. Casemir forces are extremely tiny warp drives. Look, those are going to take planetsized energy requirements.

[00:11:19]See, in most of the calculations, and we just don't have it. We don't we don't have access to that enormous amount of energy. So, and he openly does admit this in in the interview. He's not trying to pull the wool over eyes.

[00:11:35]That's why I like this interview. He's very realistic. It was a lot of fun.

[00:11:40]We don't know how to engineer it. He says, "That's right. That's fair." This actually reduces overconfidence, however. So, I'd call this the likelihood ratio. Instead of two, I would bump it down to 1.3. So, the probability goes from 17% to 21%. It goes up just a little. Our fourth piece of evidence, we simply haven't figured out the engineering yet. This is where things become tricky though because this isn't actually evidence.

[00:12:11]It's possibility and Baze hates possibility. It's not about what's possible. Baze wants observations.

[00:12:22]So the statement maybe we just haven't learned how doesn't move probability much and and I mean that's not a crisis.

[00:12:30]So the likelihood ratio 1.1 very small be and it'll bump it up from 21% to 22%.

[00:12:38]Okay, I'm just trying to be as realistic as I know how. Here the fifth piece of evidence is the secret aerospace programs could be working on this. This part of the interview becomes much weaker from a basian point of view because notice what happens. Almost every statement becomes Hal told me or Eric said or perhaps or I think or maybe etc. because again he's exploring he's speculating but this is actually a weaker point of view. None of this is direct evidence. Uh it's testimony about testimony. I'm not saying that's wrong.

[00:13:24]I'm saying from a probability standpoint that's not nearly as strong as actual evidence. So it receives a fairly modest likelihood ratio of 1.2 maybe. If we give it the 1.2 probability, it bumps it up to 25%. So we're still inching up.

[00:13:44]It's just very slowly being done. The sixth piece of evidence is Edward Teller connections. Now, this is interesting, but again, connections are not proof. They're historical breadcrumbs. This isn't propulsion evidence as such. So, we would give a likelihood ratio of maybe 1.1 1.2. I'll bump it up to 1.2.

[00:14:11]That gently raises the probability up to 29%.

[00:14:18]So, the seventh piece of evidence that we have is Galileo with an iPhone analogy. Now, that's a great analogy.

[00:14:25]No, it it really is. It's clever. It illustrates why reverse engineering alien technology could be incredibly difficult, if not outright impossible.

[00:14:37]But again, it doesn't increase the probability that aliens exist. You see how that works? It explains why we would struggle if they did. That's true.

[00:14:52]So, I'm going to just This really doesn't move the needle at all. So, I'm just going to bop a likelihood ratio of one and therefore there's no movement.

[00:15:02]The eighth piece of evidence is inference to the best explanation. Now, here's something that I can appreciate.

[00:15:12]Instead of claiming certainty, Max does the better route. We add all the anomalies together and ask what best explains all of this. That's exactly what I'm doing with the basian reasoning.

[00:15:30]So, he's spoton with his approach. His approach is by far the best way to get the most credible answer to this issue.

[00:15:40]And I really like that.

[00:15:42]However, this particular interview doesn't actually present those anomalies. It just references them. So, we can't award much probability here.

[00:15:54]Maybe a 1.3. The likelihood ratio overall update.

[00:16:00]We multiply our likelihood ratios. Now, we've had 2 * 2 * 1.3 * 1.1 * 1.2 2 * 1.2 * 1 * 1.3 that gives us 8.9 and the prior odds was 053.

[00:16:22]So our posterior odds working through the math gives us 47 and the posterior probability is 32%.

[00:16:34]So almost one in three, one/3.

[00:16:41]Yeah, that's okay. Nothing overly spectacular, but but it's workable.

[00:16:47]Here's the important caveat with this, though.

[00:16:50]This 32% does not mean there is a 32% chance warp drive UFOs exist. That's not what it's measuring. It means if you accept the likelihood ratios that I've assigned to each of the pieces of evidence, then your posterior probability rises from 5% to about 32%.

[00:17:19]But my likelihood ratios may not be correct.

[00:17:25]You might think one or two of the pieces of evidence needs either a higher or a lower likelihood ratio. and you could explain why it does and then we can turn around and plug in your likelihood ratios and calculate it again. That's a beautiful thing about B theorem, man.

[00:17:46]The discussion shifts from do you believe to which likelihood ratios are justified based on what we know and what we see evidence-wise? That's fabulous.

[00:18:03]So, I actually think Max deserves credit for being careful. I really do. I appreciated that most of all. He repeatedly acknowledges his uncertainties. Warp drives are permitted by current theory. That's okay. Negative energy has only been demonstrated in very very tiny amounts. The Casemir effect in quantum mechanics. Okay. Uh we don't know whether quantum effects ultimately destabilize warp metrics.

[00:18:31]We're still learning, right? It's possible. It's possible entirely new physics would be required. We we wouldn't know what those [clears throat] are, but that's possible. So those are scientifically reasonable caveats.

[00:18:47]So where the interview becomes much weaker is when it moves from physics into claims about alleged legacy programs and the recruitment methods and the historical figures. You know Edward Teller those sections are largely speculative or else they're based on secondhand reports rather than publicly verifiable evidence. So with the physics I would give it four stars out of five.

[00:19:12]It's a strong theoretical discussion with the engineering feasibility. Two stars out of five. It's possible in principle, but far beyond our own demonstrated capability at this point.

[00:19:27]Right. So, evidence that humans possess this technology, there's really almost none. So, I'm going to give it a one star out of five. Uh, evidence that extraterrestrials are using this technology, there not a lot of evidence there. I'll give it two stars out of five. It's an interesting hypothesis, but he doesn't establish that in this interview. The overall posterior from this interview alone about 30%.

[00:19:54]Now remember that's assuming a 5% prior and the likelihood ratios that I've used that can fluctuate. This is not dieh hard set in concrete by any means. This is the beginning of the discussion. I'm saying yeah, there might be about a 30% chance. My confidence in it has raised from five to about 30%. But that's not overly impressive. That's nothing to uh write home about.

[00:20:25]So, does physics permit warp drives?

[00:20:30]Possibly yes, under specific assumptions. Can humans build one of these things today? There's honestly no evidence of that. Do UFOs therefore use warp drives? Now, see, that's a much stronger claim and it's requiring additional evidence that we don't have.

[00:20:53]So, I'm comfortable at this point in the 30% range. And that's the power. That's the way that BA's reasoning can help us analyze certain claims to see how valid could these be. Um, you know, is it something that we can hang our hat on?

[00:21:15]Is it something that's worth looking into in the future? I'm going to argue that even though I even though my uh 5% up to 30% with this warp drive, I honestly think that moved the needle enough for me personally that I'm going to look more into this and I'm going to look forward to more coming out. that that that's a big enough pull from five to 30% to increase my confidence that you know that would rock if we can produce something like this. So yeah, this is something I'm going to keep my eye on in future discussions uh maybe in future technological breakthroughs that engineers make with say rocket engines or however however it comes about. This is worth keeping my eye on. So, this is how bays can help us analyze all kinds of different subjects. It's a lot of fun to do and it's easy to do. And what it does is it it makes us put our assumptions right up front out in the open. This is what I'm assuming.

[00:22:29]And therefore, I'm not causing problems with really weird beliefs or weird disbeliefs at the outset. I'm systematically exposing my own assumptions so that I can see how realistic my own expectations of something can be. And like I say, I did that with the Iran war. I did that with the Ukraine war earlier today at lunch.

[00:22:54]And now I've done that with this warp drive idea on UFOs. And I am just having a ball with this. So, uh, I talked to Nate today. We are getting together here pretty quick, probably toward the end of the week. and we will talk more about the trench uh number four specifically I think and Nate has a lot more background that he wants to share with you. So I'm very excited about that Thursday maybe maybe Friday we'll we'll get it together. So in the meantime I'm going to keep finding more stuff to share with you. Hit the like and subscribe and you guys go have yourselves a fabulous evening. I'll catch up to you soon.