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Not really. Time travel can be possible, but a few conditions must be met first: non-paradoxical trips, and a receiver in the past to lock on to. Also, when invoking time travel, survivorship bias is ramped up to 11. Meaning we're biased to seeing only the outcome that ensures survival into the future. Reckless time travel ends up eradicating the future from which the time travel is initiated so those timelines aren't observed from the getgo. So there's always going to be some bias towards minimizing the use of time travel.

It can also be simply that we just haven't made the receiver yet to enable our future selves to lock onto and utilize. This is only regarding secular time travel since consciousness can act as a minimum receiver of last resort. Try mentally connecting to your future self an hour from now, and then in an hour try connecting back to your past self an hour ago. This will meet the necessary conditions (but not necessarily the sufficient conditions) for time travel. This is called 4-dimensional cooperation. 5-dimensional cooperation is similar but instead of just your past self cooperating with your future self (or vv), it's your factual self cooperating with your counterfactual self (or vv).

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Furthermore, this theory seems to quite naturally account for the key puzzles I struggled to explain regarding an aliens theory, namely that they are here while the universe looks empty, and that they stay near the limits of our vision, neither making themselves clearly visible nor completely invisible.

That's because the new theory is that they're ED's, not ET's.

and that they stay near the limits of our vision, neither making themselves clearly visible nor completely invisible.

And that's because it's like how quantum coherence can't be too observed. Some nonzero interaction can still work, though.

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Puzzling but not impossible. A lot rides on our estimate of confidence in an "empty" universe.

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Those scenarios are not mutually exclusive.In this blog-post formulation you used "or" without defining it as xOr or logical or. But in your earlier post, you let the probabilities sum up to 1. So I think you're assuming that for some reason, I do not understand.

If we observe D), this would make C) more likely. "Amazing capabilities" project is easier if you only have to reverse-engineer alien-tech.Also vice-versa. Easier for some faction to get "amazing capabilities", if there's potential alien-tech lying around.I'm not sure how B) and D) interact.Arguably, we could have D-2) "amazing capabilities research caused unintended, visible UFO-sighting phenomenon". Which then would maybe motivate B) again to muddy the waters.

But personally, my priors rank C) above D). I'm very pessimistic about governments being able to stuff that amazing. Aliens seem a lot more likely to me.I wrote up my best guess for how D) would have to have been pulled off and how to check for it. But I am too lazy to check.(or think about it for more than an hour)Writing about it also risks the wrath of an absurdly competent conspiracy (scary world, in which such a thing could possibly exist). Given that you think such a thing is more likely than aliens (which I think is not that unlikely, but I know you know more than me), therefore I should do the Aumann theorem thing and stay shush.

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Soviet Union allowed publications about UFOs before price rise to distract public. Such articles get immense attention and people start to make copies of them etc. One of the topics was Petrozavodsk phenomenon, which actually was a failed missile launch from a secret spaceport.

My point is that one doesn't need to fabricate data: just give more publicity to some pice of noise and you get a Psy Op.

However, the question remains: are there many UFO cases before 1947 and outside US army reach?

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Yes, but the question is whether this explains most of the most puzzling UFO reports.

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UFOs are - in part - an admitted US psy op. "the military lied to the American public about the true nature of many unidentified flying objects in an effort to hide its growing fleets of spy planes, a Central Intelligence Agency study says." This was disclosed in 1997 - after some 50 years as a secret. See the study: "C.I.A.'s Role in the Study of U.F.O.'s. 1947-90".

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An empty universe is far more puzzling if general time travel is possible.

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But didn't you state earlier that there were many reliable reports of UFO sightings? And also that you thought the US just didn't have the ability to co-ordinate such a deception? The latter feels like a big issue with this theory for me, for the same reason that if you believe this is true, you should believe in e.g. moon landings and other conspiracies.

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is there not a 5th possible explanation - time travellers from our far future? per your discussion with Lex Fridman, faster than light travel implies time travel possible. Thoughts?

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