I feel like I can explain a lot of this in a mundane way, by combining two old hypotheses from ufology, “ball lightning that causes hallucination” and “disinformation campaign run by a clique of spies”.
The first idea I associate with Michael Robert Persinger, who had the idea that tectonic stress creates transient plasmas which also somehow cause hallucination. This was meant to explain both the geographic location of UFO reports and the dreamlike close encounters that people sometimes reported. The second idea I associate with Jacques Vallee, who is known for supposing that some of the cultural phenomena surrounding UFOs might be orchestrated by an unknown conspiracy.
For me, the “ball lightning” hypothesis is meant to explain some of those aerial phenomena that showed up on multiple sensors. The ball of plasma, moving around in spectacularly irregular ways, like a drop of boiling oil on a saucepan, is what shows up in photos; and its associated electromagnetic fields (which in Persinger’s theory cause hallucinations) trigger the other kinds of sensors. (A new commenter says a British investigation arrived at a similar theory in the 1990s.)
As for the “disinformation conspiracy”, this is meant to explain someone like David Grusch, with his lurid anecdotes of crashed saucers and their dead pilots, still held in secret labs. The idea is simply that these are tall tales deliberately manufactured from somewhere within the military and/or intelligence communities, and Grusch is one of those who fell for it.
I sat through the recent hearing, read more about the reported observations, and my interest has basically gone back to zero. For me, the default explanation for such observations remains balloons, drones, natural atmospheric events, sensor artefacts, etc.; and whatever’s going on with Grusch, is to be explained in terms of human belief and human deception, e.g. aerospace companies seeking new contracts, other agencies refusing to discuss rumors with him, or whatever.
In other words, I remain firmly in favor of mundane explanations. Specific mundane hypotheses (like the ones in my previous comment) may have their merits and demerits, but regarding the bigger issue, “ontological crisis” feels less likely than it did, before the hearing. Of course I can imagine all kinds of non-mundane scenarios; but mundane physical nature and human nature seem quite capable of producing what we’re seeing, all by themselves.
Could you explain what made you change your mind and update back to zero? It’s nice to write down your beliefs but it would be much more helpful for the rest of us if you could share what information actually helped you update.
A number of deflationary thoughts or realizations added up to the thought, “I’m not seeing, hearing, or reading anything here, that is beyond mundane explanation”. For example, realizing that an object “the size of a football field” might be an object in a sensor reading that is inferred to be the size of a football field, rather than something bulky and massive that was seen with the naked eye… But these precursor thoughts were not individually decisive. It’s not that I definitely knew what actually happened in any particular case. It was just the vivid realization that, wow, there really could be nothing at all behind all this hype.
Your post implies/states that would be a kind of straightforward explanation but I’m not sure it would be. For one, the idea that ball lightning is not only much more common than previously thought, which it would need to be to also explain UFOs, but also has a hallucination component would both be quite startling if true.
Secondly, there are aspects ball lightning cannot explain. What are we to make of the recent addition of “USO’s” for instance? Unidentified Submerged Objects have consistently been part of this recent narrative, sometimes having been UFO’s beforehand. Further, it only kind of unsatisfactorily explains people seeing actual ‘craft’. Why would it consistently produce a hallucination where people see saucer shaped UFOs? Why not mundane craft? Why not something even more unbelievable?
Thirdly, stacking an additionally wild psyop on top of it only makes it less mundane. It would be a big story if it were to be confirmed aspects of the intelligence community were deliberately running alien psyops on their own military.
The suggestion isn’t exactly ball lightning, but similar classes of phenomenon (including things like the well-attested Hessdalen lights), possibly triggered by seismological activity and meteorite activity. The hallucination aspect is based on modulated magnetic fields allegedly producing abduction-like psychedelic experiences in Canadian medical studies.
I agree this explanation doesn’t account for USOs (including the infamous Nimitz UAP, which was allegedly recorded travelling underwater at implausible speeds via sonar), physical trace evidence of alleged UAP landings (e.g. the Zamora case), and other aspects, and seems like an attempt at rationalising away awkward evidence for exotic (read: extraterrestrial) UAP. Nonetheless, natural atmospheric plasma phenomena do represent a plausible explanation for many UAP, particularly atmospheric lights performing instantaneous accelerations and other erratic maneuvers. Metallic appearances can’t be ruled out, either; there are reports of metallic and opaque/black ball lightning.
This is very, very poor reasoning. If your position is that an unexplained phenomena + conspiracy are too wild, why would you use a different, far-less-supported unexplained phenomena + conspiracy to dismiss it?
I feel like I can explain a lot of this in a mundane way, by combining two old hypotheses from ufology, “ball lightning that causes hallucination” and “disinformation campaign run by a clique of spies”.
The first idea I associate with Michael
RobertPersinger, who had the idea that tectonic stress creates transient plasmas which also somehow cause hallucination. This was meant to explain both the geographic location of UFO reports and the dreamlike close encounters that people sometimes reported. The second idea I associate with Jacques Vallee, who is known for supposing that some of the cultural phenomena surrounding UFOs might be orchestrated by an unknown conspiracy.For me, the “ball lightning” hypothesis is meant to explain some of those aerial phenomena that showed up on multiple sensors. The ball of plasma, moving around in spectacularly irregular ways, like a drop of boiling oil on a saucepan, is what shows up in photos; and its associated electromagnetic fields (which in Persinger’s theory cause hallucinations) trigger the other kinds of sensors. (A new commenter says a British investigation arrived at a similar theory in the 1990s.)
As for the “disinformation conspiracy”, this is meant to explain someone like David Grusch, with his lurid anecdotes of crashed saucers and their dead pilots, still held in secret labs. The idea is simply that these are tall tales deliberately manufactured from somewhere within the military and/or intelligence communities, and Grusch is one of those who fell for it.
I sat through the recent hearing, read more about the reported observations, and my interest has basically gone back to zero. For me, the default explanation for such observations remains balloons, drones, natural atmospheric events, sensor artefacts, etc.; and whatever’s going on with Grusch, is to be explained in terms of human belief and human deception, e.g. aerospace companies seeking new contracts, other agencies refusing to discuss rumors with him, or whatever.
In other words, I remain firmly in favor of mundane explanations. Specific mundane hypotheses (like the ones in my previous comment) may have their merits and demerits, but regarding the bigger issue, “ontological crisis” feels less likely than it did, before the hearing. Of course I can imagine all kinds of non-mundane scenarios; but mundane physical nature and human nature seem quite capable of producing what we’re seeing, all by themselves.
Could you explain what made you change your mind and update back to zero? It’s nice to write down your beliefs but it would be much more helpful for the rest of us if you could share what information actually helped you update.
A number of deflationary thoughts or realizations added up to the thought, “I’m not seeing, hearing, or reading anything here, that is beyond mundane explanation”. For example, realizing that an object “the size of a football field” might be an object in a sensor reading that is inferred to be the size of a football field, rather than something bulky and massive that was seen with the naked eye… But these precursor thoughts were not individually decisive. It’s not that I definitely knew what actually happened in any particular case. It was just the vivid realization that, wow, there really could be nothing at all behind all this hype.
Your post implies/states that would be a kind of straightforward explanation but I’m not sure it would be. For one, the idea that ball lightning is not only much more common than previously thought, which it would need to be to also explain UFOs, but also has a hallucination component would both be quite startling if true.
Secondly, there are aspects ball lightning cannot explain. What are we to make of the recent addition of “USO’s” for instance? Unidentified Submerged Objects have consistently been part of this recent narrative, sometimes having been UFO’s beforehand. Further, it only kind of unsatisfactorily explains people seeing actual ‘craft’. Why would it consistently produce a hallucination where people see saucer shaped UFOs? Why not mundane craft? Why not something even more unbelievable?
Thirdly, stacking an additionally wild psyop on top of it only makes it less mundane. It would be a big story if it were to be confirmed aspects of the intelligence community were deliberately running alien psyops on their own military.
The suggestion isn’t exactly ball lightning, but similar classes of phenomenon (including things like the well-attested Hessdalen lights), possibly triggered by seismological activity and meteorite activity. The hallucination aspect is based on modulated magnetic fields allegedly producing abduction-like psychedelic experiences in Canadian medical studies.
I agree this explanation doesn’t account for USOs (including the infamous Nimitz UAP, which was allegedly recorded travelling underwater at implausible speeds via sonar), physical trace evidence of alleged UAP landings (e.g. the Zamora case), and other aspects, and seems like an attempt at rationalising away awkward evidence for exotic (read: extraterrestrial) UAP. Nonetheless, natural atmospheric plasma phenomena do represent a plausible explanation for many UAP, particularly atmospheric lights performing instantaneous accelerations and other erratic maneuvers. Metallic appearances can’t be ruled out, either; there are reports of metallic and opaque/black ball lightning.
This is very, very poor reasoning. If your position is that an unexplained phenomena + conspiracy are too wild, why would you use a different, far-less-supported unexplained phenomena + conspiracy to dismiss it?