Will one of the top 100 scientific journals listed here publish an article endorsing the view that the most likely explanation for the purported alien bodies presented in Mexico in September 2023 is that they are are genuine at any time before the end of 2025?
Update 2025-08-30 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): - A qualifying article must endorse that the bodies are genuinely extraterrestrial in origin.
If a journal concludes they are genuine biological remains or a new terrestrial species (i.e., not a hoax) without endorsing extraterrestrial origin, this resolves No.
I'd really like to wager a lot of mana on this, but I want to make sure I understand the resolution criteria.
I believe that the mummies are genuine examples of biological creatures that will provide significant insights to discoverering a new species that existed on Earth, but they do not have an extraterrestrial origin.
For example, if they are found to be genuine artifacts that serve as evidence of a new species similar to humans (a shocking and substantive scientific discovery), but relate in no way to "off world life" how would this prediction resolve?
In other words, if it turns out that the scientists working on this have genuinely followed a reasonable scientific method (and it's clearly proven to not be a hoax) and that process contributes significant new data that informs our beliefs about the domain of terrestrial beings that have existed, but they make no claims about off world origins, will this resolve "yes"?
@Krantz A scientific journal must endorse the view that the bodies are genuinely extraterrestrial in origin.
@SG To my knowledge, none of the researchers representing the discovery are claiming the bodies have an extraterrestrial origin. That's just an assumption produced by the media spin.
The actual claims are they are simply lifeforms we have not yet discovered (at least publicly).
It would be nice to see a prediction simply aimed at whether the claims being made by the researchers were true (as opposed to a bet about an assumption that goes beyond their claims).
The comments might lead one to believe we are wagering on whether this is some sort of hoax, but with your resolution criteria, this could be one of the most profound discoveries in biology that leads us to realize an entire other civilization had existed on Earth and this would still resolve "no".
They are real. It's not a hoax.
But they aren't from space.
Never claimed to be.
Look at them and ask:
Why is humanoid body found the first place? There are 1000 ways to hide it if aliens don't want to show themselves, and 1000 better ways to demonstrate yourself.
Would this ribcage allow to breathe? Would these limbs move the body? Would this body support this head without falling front/back?
Why to trust those who tell it's government of Mexico?
Why to trust government of Mexico?
The list of 100 journals could be listed directly instead of through a science stan page with tons of ads! https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en
@Chizardium If they were real aliens, the guy who got famous making hoax aliens would be first to find out about them and buy them, so it doesn't tell me that much.
The first people to get into anything are generally crazy, because to get to something first you have to start doing it before it makes sense.
@makoyass There is no reason to think these aliens are real, but this is correct.
People think it is evidence against a claim to show that the person making the claim has made false claims of that kind in the past.
But it is not; the person who would make the claim when it is true is exactly the same person as the person who would make the claim when it is false. They are not biased in favor of falsity: they are biased in favor of what the claim says.
@SpennyFawcett You get better at fathoming after a while. Lots of free mana to be had on aliens, economic doom, new physics, etc. It is hard to fathom but we manage.
@NcyRocks It's not unlikely for bipedalism and large skulls to be a convergent evolutionary attractor for technological species. Bipedalism enables covering larger territories (so, larger and much more complex, overlapping communities, more complex hunting patterns, need for long term planning, wider access to resources) and frees up the hands for tool use. Large skulls because brain.
I'd consider it a red flag if they had chins or noses (not attractors) but they don't.
@makoyass My real issue is that they look like vertebrates at all. They have four limbs attached to a main body, along with a head that has two eyes and a mouth. I'd be shocked if that exact schema evolved anywhere else in the universe that we might ever encounter. The particular resemblance to humans is a nail in the coffin.
@NcyRocks That is again just an convergent attractor. You don't need more than two eyes for stereoscopy, and higher animal eyes are expensive. The sensors go at the front so that the earliest predators could see what they're biting, and that is why the mouth is there too. It's at one side because that's the direction the animal moves fastest in. The brain goes close to the eyes for latency reasons. (The nose goes there because the first breathing hole went there, and because nowhere else on the trachea would be convenient for pointing a sensory organ at things)
These things were fixed early in evolutionary history and it will go the same way every time.
From what I've heard, there's not supposed to be a convergent genetic language though. I've heard it argued that we should expect them to have different bases or something, which would make the 40% convergent genes uh, well the machine wouldn't have worked. It's possible those arguments were wrong though. I don't think we actually know how early life chose its genetic language.
@makoyass Oh, another explanation for overlapping genomes is panspermia, which would also be an explanation for why our civs are alive (and small) at the same time.