Chris Zell wrote:
As to hallucinations, there have been a number of people since the
'60's who function very well in responsible jobs despite having them.
People who understand what hallucinations are, and who have been
warned to expect them, may not be fooled. People not expecting them,
or people suffering from hallucinations or voices from mental disease
may well be convinced that they are real. More to the point with
regard to UFOs (assuming they are imaginary), society-wide manias and
hallucinations have been common throughout history, and there is no
reason to think their number is reduced today in modern U.S. society.
People are unaware of the extent to which societies as a whole have
gone ape-shit in the past. In the European witch-hunt manias of 14th
and 15th centuries, approximately 50,000 to 100,000 women were
tortured and burned at the stake. That's a lot of people given the
population at the time; it is not far from the proportion of modern
"ethnic cleansing" in which millions are killed. In some towns most
of the unmarried or elderly women were killed. This was partly done
to steal their property, but mainly because of people sincerely
believed in witchcraft, and there were plenty of witnesses.
If hundreds of thousands of modern people suffer from the sincere
delusion that they have seen UFOs or been abducted, that would not be
the least bit surprising, considering how many people honestly
believe that they are actually Jesus Christ or some other religious
figure, or animals, aliens, movie stars, reincarnated, or famous
people such as (in the old days) Napoleon or Anastasia.
The fact that these delusions have common elements is not a bit
surprising. They always did in the past. People have limited
imaginations and their fantasies or delusions are based on stories
they have heard. The variations are about as wide as you see in
folk-tales from different districts of pre-modern Japan, when
peasants did not travel much.
If eyewitness information is to be ignored so completely and written
off as unreliable, then much of our legal system is worthless and
little better than selecting individuals for punishment randomly . . .
This is more or less the case. The number of wrongful convictions is very high.
As I said, numerous tests have been done of eyewitness reports in
set-up situations (with actors) where the witnesses are normal, sane
young college students and the like. Reports written immediately
after the incidents are hopelessly garbled. The actors' roles are
reversed, and the words they said are grossly misreported. Very
often, unconscious race and sex prejudice in the witness distorts the
events. This happens even though the witnesses are aware that what
they saw was an act. (They are typically not aware it is fake when
the incident occurs; that is to say, they are not forewarned.)
Naturally, there are many eyewitness reports of crimes which are
entirely reliable. For example, if someone you know commits a crime,
it takes a long time, and you are within sight of the person, your
report will be highly reliable. Eyewitness reports fail when:
Events occur quickly
Events are extraordinary and not at all expected
The witness does not know the criminal
The witness is terribly frightened (which is not always the case with
a crime, for example, not with embezzlement)
Likewise, many of the most dramatic encounters come from airline
pilots or law enforcement officers or those charged with defense of
our nation . . .
Approximately how many incidents have their been? What is the
frequency? How many airline pilots in particular?
Here at the airport where I work, I encounter many pilots, albeit
mostly private jets or unscheduled flights such as medivac. They do
not strike me as exceptionally sane or reliable people, but then
neither do electrochemists, psychiatrists, programmers or other
groups I have encountered. All in all, as they say in England,
there's naught so strange as folks.
- Jed
