Category: psychology

And Now for Something Completely Different

On By JohnIn psychology, scienceLeave a comment

I’ll just leave this here for now.

…

No, wait.

Let’s do this.

For people who’ve said repeatedly lately that it’s just imagined or made-up or (insultingly? amusingly?) that it was “swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.”, I’d like to underscore a statement from early on in the Executive Summary:

“…a majority [of sightings] were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation.”

Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

It’s probably overlooked, but an operative word there is “and” — all of them at the same time.

That said, of the 144 sightings they’ve captured between 2004 and 2021.

Of those 144 sightings they’ve collected, they have identified with conclusive certainty, the staggering total of…

ONE.

And it was a weather balloon.

However, that still leaves 143 observations yet to be verified. And of those, there are 18 that appear to demonstrate advanced technology. Their words, not mine:

“In 18 incidents, described in 21 reports, observers reported unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics.”

Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

Also, by “unusual”, what it means they move in a manner in which absolutely no known aircraft could possibly move within our understanding of physics: changing direction instantaneously; going from a few thousand feet to 80,000 feet in a few fractions of a second, not showing any indication of exhaust.

What the report doesn’t say, but I think clearly infers, is that there is no known or even classified technology that the US Government has or knows of that has any unusual UAP movement pattern capabilities.

This is, quite clearly, something that is only a glimpse of what will eventually be possible in the far distant future of humanity.

Go read the whole report. It’s only a few pages.

Extreme Independence

On By JohnIn psychologyLeave a comment

Yes, it is.

It can manifest in ways considered by many to be inconsequential.

For example, I will often insist that I can do some_task and steadfastly never ask another for help or assistance or guidance or opinion… to the point that it’s becomes self-destructive.

“Yeah…”, people will say, “that’s just the way he is. He’s just really independent that way…”

That extreme independence is the result of the combination of my own narrow-mindedness that I now attribute primarily to a lifetime of shaming and negative criticism that I’d received from a young age. After awhile, I simply accepted that I would either be tormented endlessly, or that I’d simply stop asking for help and set to figuring out a way to achieve whatever some_task I was interested in.

Tack on an unsettling degree of, what I’d find out many years later that we all cope with to some extent, Imposter Syndrome and… well… here we are.

Yes, Extreme Independence is most certainly a trauma response.

Hindsight Bias

On By JohnIn psychologyLeave a comment

You cannot know what’s going happen while it’s happening. In literature (or film, or any scripted story) it’s generally predictable. But down here where we live — in real life — the unpredictable cannot be predicted.

A Hindsight Bias is a term used in psychology where one may tend to overestimate their own ability to have predicted an outcome of a scenario that could not possibly have been predicted.

Example, “I knew this would happen!”

No, you didn’t. If you knew it was going to happen, then why were you not prepared and accepting of it happening? Why are you surprised at its occurrence?

More meaningful explanation in the Wiki and some good examples here.