Worth looking up John Mack. He was a psychologist and Harvard professor who researched stories of alien abductions and tried to make sense of them from a psychological point of view.
To the best of my understanding (do your own research), he hypothesized that many of these stories were true, even if the explanations were not really aliens. They were spiritual and cultural phenomena that people really experienced.
> entire schools full of children reporting metal objects landing with beings coming out to communicate with them telepathically
You're referring to the 1994 incident in Zimbabwe, which Mack famously studied. It's certainly an interesting one!
I remember going through all the videos on the internet about that incident, and ultimately being unimpressed with the investigation. There were 60 kids at the school, Mack only interviewed a few. Why is that? I get the feeling they actually interviewed many more but cherry-picked stories to fit their narrative. There were also stories about UFO sightings in Zimbabwe in the days leading up to that event, I'm sure many of the kids had heard about it before they went to recess that day?
I've never read any of his actual long-form publications on that incident though (don't even know if there are any), so perhaps I missed something.
Back to your basic question: "how could all these people be crazy?" I don't think anyone knows, and I'm not sure many people are studying it. But even a super smart Harvard professor couldn't make a strong case one way or the other, even after studying a school full of children directly after one of the most compelling UFO sightings in history. So it's probably best to move on, assume it wasn't aliens, and wait for someone to capture an alien craft clearly on video. Personally I use it as a reason to upgrade my iPhone and get those sweet new cameras ;)
A good friend of mine, who came to Europe when he was 17, once said to me: "in Africa you see things that you just can not believe as a European".
He told me how in places without electricity, small villages, really "creepy vibes" exist.
For example one story where, in broad daylight there is a cow lying on the side of the road. Blood runs from the cow across the road to the other side. It's not broad daylight there, it's pitch black where the trail of the blood ends. The sky, the street, everything.
He says almost every African from smaller areas knows these experiences.
In the West, such things are horror stories. Another friend kind of jokingly said it might be „due to radiation, which affects the crazy energies of nature“ in the west. That‘s why we don‘t have these sightings.
I know, no scientific contribution, but finally the possibility to share this story in a proper forum.
Because what makes me think: my friend is smart, not crazy and told it very convincingly.
At least in such a way that I believe that he has seen it.
That doesn't make it real, I know, but kind of scary for a European.
In corners of South America without infrastructure I have also experienced very strange situations and felt the darkest energies, had the weirdest encounters and strangest hallucinations...
Anyways, i am glad that for me, these are just stories. I don‘t want to be the guy that has one of those encounters and then has to either forget about it or fight for his credibility.
I've sometimes pondered about the effect of observation on reality, and how, as in shrodingers cat, the unobserved might be quite flexible in state.
It is interesting to imagine how it might be that more observation might make state more finite, and make possibilities that might be contraindicated by a non-local observer impossible to observe locally, tangentially related to the way that when something becomes more isolated in distance or time the less certainty we can attach to details of observation.
It might be that things can be locally observed that are not globally tenable as long as the interactions between the light cone of the effects of the local observer and the contraindicating observer do not overlap in such a way that the inconsistancy would contraindicate the act of observation.
Probably irrelevant, but it is interesting to note that the rituals of many forms of "magic" "purification" can be characterized as attempting to create precisely this kind of causality barrier between the practicioner and the outside world.
It is rediculous but interesting to ponder how with so many less observers and so much less communication/interaction between distant observers, perhaps reality was once more flexible.
Whenever I read about stuff like that, it reminds me that a simulation would probably have some kind of 'lazy calculation' mechanism that only calculates something when it is actually needed. It makes no sense to simulate every particle in the universe if not every particle is actually observed.
But if people do indeed notice such a glitch in reality, maybe there is a way to exploit it? How can it be determined whether something is observed?
It's interesting to ponder for sure, but be careful to not fall into a Deepak Chopra-style hole. The observer effect is so viciously perfect for misunderstanding, mysticism and exploitation. I'm not very informed when it comes to QM, but there seems to be a lot of extrapolation from similarly uninformed people about its consequences or underlying causes.
Thanks for sharing this. There could be all kinds of scientific explanations, but I like the idea that there is too much energy in the developed countries that fogs our senses. I often hear a deep hum late at night, which is most certainly caused by a pump running somehwere in the neighborhood. It almost drove me crazy for a while, but then I decided to simply ignore it. I can still hear it, but it does not bother me anymore. In other words, I delibertately decided to dumb down a bit.
To the best of my understanding (do your own research), he hypothesized that many of these stories were true, even if the explanations were not really aliens. They were spiritual and cultural phenomena that people really experienced.
> entire schools full of children reporting metal objects landing with beings coming out to communicate with them telepathically
You're referring to the 1994 incident in Zimbabwe, which Mack famously studied. It's certainly an interesting one!
I remember going through all the videos on the internet about that incident, and ultimately being unimpressed with the investigation. There were 60 kids at the school, Mack only interviewed a few. Why is that? I get the feeling they actually interviewed many more but cherry-picked stories to fit their narrative. There were also stories about UFO sightings in Zimbabwe in the days leading up to that event, I'm sure many of the kids had heard about it before they went to recess that day?
I've never read any of his actual long-form publications on that incident though (don't even know if there are any), so perhaps I missed something.
Back to your basic question: "how could all these people be crazy?" I don't think anyone knows, and I'm not sure many people are studying it. But even a super smart Harvard professor couldn't make a strong case one way or the other, even after studying a school full of children directly after one of the most compelling UFO sightings in history. So it's probably best to move on, assume it wasn't aliens, and wait for someone to capture an alien craft clearly on video. Personally I use it as a reason to upgrade my iPhone and get those sweet new cameras ;)