There are many markets on Manifold about the existential risk posed by AI, so here's one about a different risk.
On July 26, 2023, David Grusch testified to Congress that 39 witnesses had come forward to him about a reverse engineering program for craft of non-human origin.
The National Defense Authorization Act currently includes language declaring all craft property of the US government through eminent domain, creating an amnesty period for private contractors to turn over any such craft, and establishing a scientific committee to create a disclosure process. If passed as expected, the bill would likely force a timeline for the release of information, if any exists, around the 2024 Presidential election.
Journalists who ask about the topic have gotten employees of the special access programs to state they are involved in researching such craft, but these employees have always stopped at explaining why there is a need for such secrecy, other than that there is a "risk to national security." During his Congressional testimony, Grusch stated that he was aware of violence, on the part of both humans and by the non-human intelligence, to maintain this extraordinary level of secrecy. According to his testimony, this secrecy also extends to other nations. The Intelligence Community Inspector General found this security risk "credible and urgent."
Is the national security risk the act of disclosure itself?
This market resolves to YES if non-human intelligence exists in ANY form (aliens, God, interdimensional travel, etc), and the act of the government's offering proof of its existence (without some sort of controlled process) would directly result in the injury or death of at least 100,000 people.
The existential risk could be caused by either non-humans or humans:
The non-human intelligence would attack humans
Our simulation would have no value and the intelligence would shut it down
Humans would be appalled by what they see and declare war on it
The magnitude of the secret would cause people to overthrow the US government
Mass panic or riots would occur and result in chaos
Many people would commit suicide due to some sort of religious revelation
Unlike some of the other UFO markets that have a close date of 2023, this market will only be closed when there is a consensus explanation for Grusch's whistleblower complaint. Ways in which the market could resolve NO are that a "more optimistic" explanation than non-human intelligence is found for the coverup such as massive fraud, unbelievably advanced human weapons, 40 indictments for making up a false story to Congress - or that non-human intelligence is acknowledged but nothing happens.
1,000People are also trading
RESOLUTION: I am cleaning up old markets. I decided to close this market because I am going to create a new market "If non-human intelligence exists, which of the following rumors are true?" and merge this question into it. This market never garnered many trades, so it's not worth keeping a duplicate market open.
Thanks for betting, and see you there.
I, too, want to believe, but this is completely preposterous, and apparently there is no "NO" resolution for "nothing ever comes out of it".
It is hard to indict somebody when proving the negative would basically require declassifying every single military program.
@lukres It is preposterous, but it's fun. As to "nothing ever comes of it," nobody would trade the market if there was a possible N/A outcome because N/A unwinds all trades.
As to "wanting to believe," I don't know why anyone would want that. Humans are doing well enough on their own march towards superintelligence. If what Grusch is saying is true, that would be extremely bad news for everyone.
@SteveSokolowski Interesting perspective, I haven't realised you could look at it like that.
How I see it, we are all about to die rather soon of old age, progress is insufficient to prevent that, and "NHI" would at least be interesting, and with some luck, life-saving. Basically I want to believe in anything with a potential to shake things up, because the current course is hard to accept.
@lukres After watching that hearing I decided to read a lot about the topic as if I were an appeals court judge: is there independent evidence that, if taken in the most favorable light, would support Grusch's claims? I found that about 99% is trash and people trying to make money off of scams and books, but the remaining 1% is surprisingly consistent - and the next paragraph completely ignores all images and videos after 2010, which could be AI generated.
There are four things that seem to be extremely common, across government reports and even literature dating back more than a century. 1. There are a lot of these orbs with glass around them that follow both military and civilian planes, and concentrate around places where nuclear weapons are present (frequency of sightings increased when nukes were developed.) 2. When people go near these things, they make absurdly fast turns that defy the laws of physics, and in 75%+ of cases, suddenly disappear. 3. All the claimed "abductees" and government leakers, including the whistleblowers, agree they are not "aliens" as if from another planet, but rather intelligence from another dimension/universe/plane of existence/time period that humans don't understand. 4. There are likely more than 1 million sightings (!) per decade, with a minimum of 50,000 verified eyewitnesses.
There's also a lot of speculation about the "why." I don't give weight to the speculation because unlike the four points above, the evidence supporting the reasons was often what a single person claimed, but all of the speculated reasons are very bad, hence this market.
To me, this whole topic has a feeling of what happened in September 2022, with the FTX catastrophe, which is why I'm paying attention. The evidence was obvious that FTX was a scam, and there were lots of people claiming that, but it was labeled a "fringe" idea. Instead, good marketing assured 2 million victims that things were fine.
As Michio Kaku says, the evidence here is actually now overwhelming that some phenomenon is occurring - far more conclusive than that FTX was a scam in September 2022. I find it difficult to believe that anyone who spends 40 hours reading about this topic would write it off as 40 whistleblowers putting their careers on the line for make-believe.