UFO Files Released

"The UK has recently released some of its files on unidentified flying objects – UFOs. It does not appear that there is anything shocking in the reports. In the end it seems like the release will result in just another round of news headlines with "UFO" in the title, but nothing else.

The documents do provide further evidence for what I call the psychocultural hypothesis. UFO sightings and encounters are certainly an interesting group of phenomena – but are they evidence of anything alien. Many people I talk to (including a documentary producer just recently) are left with the sense that there must be something going on. No explanation seems satisfactory to explain all the accounts, and there is a residue of unexplained reports.

This is the "where there is smoke there is fire" argument. But I think it misses an important question – there may be fire (a phenomenon) but what kind of fire? I think the fire is a multifaceted psychocultural phenomenon.

What I find most fascinating is that we are living through the formation of a modern mythology. We can see the mythology evolve, and there is ample documentation of the process. The psychological aspects of the mythology are also well documented. Perception is flawed and lends itself to false positives – to seeing patterns that are not real, or to misinterpreting mundane stimuli as something bizarre. Disconnected lights may be mentally joined into a large ship, for example. Distance, size, and velocity can be grossly misinterpreted. Perception is contaminated by expectation. And then memory can be distorted through contamination, suggestion, and just morphing over time to embellish an event.

There are also specific neurological phenomena, like hypnagogic hallucinations – waking dreams that can be interpreted as alien abductions.

Into this mix are deliberate hoaxes, including faked videos and picture, models of spacecraft, and false reports of abductions."

Read more at Neurologica (Thanks Annette M)