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Belief in NHI

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BeerDrinkingBurke:

Given the recent events in the U.S., I was wondering if anybody would like to discuss the UFO rabbit hole. Specifically, the nature of collective unusual beliefs that unidentified aerial phenomena are technical craft piloted by non-human intelligence (NHI).
 
There is a whole host of other associated beliefs or claims that form a kind of ecosystem. Here's a few examples in no particular order...
 
- Governments around the world are conspiring to hide the existence of aliens from the public (since the 1930s).
- Governments around the world are conspiring -with- the aliens for nefarious purposes (a possible takeover). 
- Aliens have visited Earth since ancient times and had contact with ancient civilizations  (Erich von Däniken, Chariots of the Gods?).
- Aliens are abducting people and conducting experiments on them.
- Aliens have mixed their DNA with people (Starseeds). 
- Aliens can communicate with people telepathically. 
- There is a factional war going on behind the scenes to try and bring the truth to the public (known as 'disclosure').

And so on.
I think most of these theories have been presented in the X-Files. It's a bit like the approach that Deus Ex took with conspiracy theories in general (assume they are all true). So, it works as a pretty good smorgasbord of every major UFO theory.

I'm interested in understanding more about how such ideas have spread, historically, and what kinds of general psychological theories or principles might help to understand this phenomenon of belief in non-Human intelligence (NHI) visiting Earth. 

A few working assumptions...
1. UFOs / UAPs are real -unidentified- phenomena. Some small number of these phenomena cannot currently be explained and are genuine mysteries.
2. We can believe the accounts given by many individuals who have witnessed such UFOs / UAPs (pilots, military and civilian). By this I mean, we can believe that they had the experiences they claimed to have. But with the important proviso that "experience" always includes a psychological component (interpretation), or is even produced by the subconscious (hallucinations, projections). At some point, the distinction becomes a bit blurry. "To see is to believe", yet "there is more to seeing than meets the eye (ball)".
3. We can deploy Occam's razor to explain the social phenomenon of widespread belief in NHI visiting Earth. That is:
- The psychosocial UFO hypothesis is capable of explaining the phenomenon of widespread belief.
- This hypothesis is significantly more simple and (logically?) likely than the alternative that NHI actually are visiting Earth.
- Therefore, we should opt to go along with this hypothesis. 
 
I'll start with a few handy links to get you into the topic if you need to get up to speed.
 
Digging Into the Mythos (Ongoing)

The Vril Society (Mythos - Nazism)
The Roswell Incident
Project Sign
The 1952 Washington DC UFO Incident
Barney and Betty Hill Incident

The recent hullabaloo...

We start with the Pentagon UFO Files (2020).
UFO & UAP 'Need to Know' News Documentary with Coulthart & Zabel (August 2022).
The Article by Leslie Keen for the Debrief (June 5th).
News Nation interview of David Grush by Ross Coulthar (12th of June).
Ezra Klein interviews Leslie Kean. (20th June).
The House Oversight's national security subcommittee hearing (26th of July).
Post-Hearing Roundtable 
 A skeptics review of the Grusch interview.
Some reporting on Elizondo's promotion of the UFO story, and his connection to Harry Reid
A skeptics review of the hearing
 
And then, we have some interesting discussions of the subject from a psychosocial perspective.
Carl Jung on Flying Saucers.
A Skeptoid investigation of the 1994 Ruwa Zimbabwe Alien Encounter (Garry Nolan seems to think this incident is one of the most convincing of UFO encounters. Yet there is quite a lot of evidence against taking it seriously.)
This article on the popularity of the 'Starseed' idea goes into the Forer effect.
Why We Want to Believe in Aliens (Apparently, people believe in aliens are less likely to believe in religion. This points to a common connection: The desire for meaning.)
Exploring the Psychology of Belief.
Mental Health and the Paranormal.
The relationship between schizotypal facets and conspiracist beliefs via cognitive processes

A relevant book by Mick West: Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect

Finally... with respects to the 'social' part of 'psychosocial', I think we cannot ignore very real attempts at 'social engineering' with respects to unusual beliefs. Here there is seemingly quite a bit of documentation of CIA involvement over the years.
 

BeerDrinkingBurke:
OK, I'm going to take a left turn now, and kick this off with a comparison with my own recent experience of mental illness. Namely, severe health anxiety.
 
I'm currently getting assessed for ADHD, and I think one of the issues it poses for me is periods of fixation on subjects. This is quite helpful at times. I can get up to speed on complex stuff pretty quickly because I want to 'figure it out' / problem solve, but it can also put you at risk of stuff like health anxiety. Actually, I think maybe on some level I'm engaging with this subject as a way of sublimating my fascination with the recent hearings, so that it goes in a more healthy direction. ;-) But I want to talk a bit about my experiences here, because I think there are some general links to be made with unusual beliefs / NHI beliefs, and you might find it illuminating. Regardless of if we are more on the extreme side when it comes to focus / fixation on problems, we can say in general that human beings are good at finding patterns in phenomena, and 'reading into' things. In fact, our very beliefs can shape our experiences in fundamental ways (physical, psychological).
 
So, how my health anxiety played out was a bit like this...
 
1. Experience of illness in the family (my partner, my mum, myself) got me feeling vulnerable. An environmental factor.
2. I was worried about the threat posed by Covid (long covid in particular, as I am asthmatic). I spent a lot of time reading about it online. An initial trigger.
3. I developed physical symptoms of illness (chest pain, palpitations, heart burn). Manifestation of concern.
4. I got those symptoms investigated (increasing feeling vulnerable). I became fixated with the idea that there was something wrong with me (due to my very real, physical symptoms). Investigation / fixation.
5. More symptoms emerged (vision issues, dizziness, tingling). Manifestation of concern.
6. I got those symptoms investigated  (increasing feeling vulnerable). Investigation / fixation.
7. The spiral continues. 
 
And so on. Eventually, I ended up with my eyes not functioning at all (keeping them closed all the time, unable to comfortably focus them on things or risk real migraines), and severe hearing sensitivity, that kept me house bound for four months. My visual symptoms (pattern sensitivity, photo-sensitivity) were real enough that a neurologically trained optometrist diagnosed me with symptoms of head trauma induced post-traumatic vision syndrome (maybe from a virus). A diagnostic physician could think of no connection between my heart issues or my vision issues. I should note that I myself was very careful to spend no time googling my symptoms (having learnt that lesson in the past from pointlessly worrying about something). Eventually I was able to see a neurologist, who was able to give me a diagnosis that a GP should have given me many months earlier - it was all generated by anxiety. My very real, physical symptoms were generated by my nervous system stressing out different parts of my body / brain. Within a few short weeks I made substantial recovery, with my vision working more or less fine (still can't play PC games but...) and my hearing sensitivity recovered to normal levels.
 
OK, so let's now imagine a hypothetical person with beliefs in NHI.
 
1. Experience of loss of meaning (lack of community connection / neo-liberalism.) An environmental factor.
2. Become interested in mysterious stories about UFOs in the media or online. Then algorithms feed them endless videos. Or they hunt out articles or books themselves. An initial trigger.
3. They then witness seeing something strange in the sky, and can't explain it. Or perhaps have an abduction 'experience.' Manifestation of concern.
4. They start to investigate this experience, reading more about NHI / UFOs. Investigation / fixation.
5. They then start to notice even more strange things that don't quite 'make sense' about the government, or other people's experiences. Manifestation of concern.
6. So they investigate even more.... Investigation / fixation.
7. The spiral continues.   
 
This might be a bit of a simplification and a stretch at the same time, giving both a health anxiety (HA below) experience and unusual beliefs (AB) the same number of steps / bullet points. But what I am trying to draw attention to with this framework is the significant similarities, rather than trying to claim they are different versions of exactly the same thing.
 
The similarities are...
1. Both HA and UB are preconfigured by what we might loosely call underlying 'environmental factors.' Experiences people have that make them more vulnerable to each.
2. Both HA and UB are then gradually entered into by triggering events like a global pandemic / experiences of illness, or stories about UFOs, etc.
3. Both HA and UB are capable of generating manifestations of the concern, in the form of real physical symptoms, or perceptions of the things obsessed about.
4. Both HA and UB have a cycle, where the manifestations trigger more investigation. 
5. Then the investigations trigger more manifestation....   
6. And the manifestation triggers more investigation...   
7. The spiral continues.
 
 
So, although I am sure there are many differences, I think at their respective cores, each exhibits a kind of feedback loop. 
This loop is something we become vulnerable to because of other circumstances. With respects to unusual beliefs regarding aliens or conspiracies, it's surely no coincidence that it is predominantly white middle aged or older men in the U.S. / England / Australia etc. who start to develop them the most. We have seen this with Q-Anon and Facebook. These are the kinds of people who are probably more socially isolated, more in need of community / more feeling the sting of a loss of status due to economic / social changes. I would be interested in hearing of any kind of comparative studies of other countries / genders etc. My impression is that this is (for now) a far less common problem in places like China, where there is still more social cohesion, and opportunities for a sense of meaning derived from family life etc. I wouldn't want to essentialize that as some inherent element of Chinese culture (although I think there are quite deeply ingrained social elements at play there). It is probably more to do with differences in the experience of modernization and the atomization of family / breakdown of traditional communities etc.
 
What I'm particularly interested in though from here is the manifestation stage. Looking at the recent hullabaloo, I think a common story (Garry Nolan, Zabel, etc.) is some early life experience of UFOs as a child. I assume that in each case the individuals had some kind of exposure to stories about UFOs, which helped to manifest their experiences subconsciously, even if at the time they didn't know what those experiences were. They only rationally reflected upon them later and identified them as UFO / Alien encounters. The fact that these were subconscious manifestations is what then made them feel even more convincing. So for example, Garry Nolan (or was it Zabel?) experienced seeing strange people in his room as a child. He didn't know what to think of it, and forgot about it. Later, as an adult, he saw the cover of the book Communion in a second hand book store. He recalls dropping the book in shock, as he recognized the 'Grey' alien on the front cover as looking exactly like the strange people he saw in his childhood experience. I think we can easily appreciate how this subconscious / conscious gap led him to becoming utterly convinced that aliens were real, and were on Earth. After all, from his experience, he had no conscious awareness of the grey alien concept at all when he first had that experience. The seemingly 'logical' conclusion was that the experience was real, and hence, the aliens are real. Some deeper, psychologically informed consideration could raise alternatives. 1. That he had seen images of such aliens as a child, forgot about it, and then had the experience without knowing what it was. 2. Perhaps when he saw the image, his mind made the connection with that childhood experience, and 'filled in the blanks' such that he re-remembered in a new way (a bit like dejavu).
 
Another interesting comparison here is with respects to credibility. Until the very end, when I finally saw my neurologist, at no point in my health anxiety journey did any doctor suggest that my issues may have been caused by anxiety. This includes multiple GPs, a neurological optometrist, a diagnostic physician, an endocrinologist, a gastroenterologist, and a cardiologist. In fact, I myself suggested it to a GP but they thought it unlikely. People tend to think that somebody must be outwardly exhibiting symptoms of hypochondria in order to have health anxiety. There are also probably social biases at play with respects to things like gender. Women often report that their illnesses are blown off as anxiety by doctors. Yet here I was, a man with anxiety, and every doctor I saw treated me as though I was actually ill! We can consider this from the perspective of believers in NHI. They might seem very persuasive, rational, and even skeptical towards their own experiences. Some profess that they never had any interest in UFOs, and were not 'UFO guys'. They simply have had very unusual experiences that they wanted to relay to the public out of a sense of duty / honesty. Because people expect those who have had unusual experiences to exhibit obvious symptoms of fixation, and because we tend to give a lot of credence to older white men with official jobs like pilots (or immunologists), many people with psychological issues may strike us as 'credible'. This in turn can then draw in more people who were previously on the fence, and turn them into 'believers'.
 
Well, these are my thoughts so far. I have not yet read much of the Jung paper. I'll do that over the coming days and share some of the juicy parts.

Jubal:
This sounds plausible to me! Psychology oddly enough really never was my area: I always found how societies work fascinating, but I've never done so much on the individual side. Possibly I don't want to stare at my own too hard!

I think the question of what we mean by community and how that interacts with information environments is the bit that most interests me. Clearly in a sense some people find community around conspiracist beliefs, and existing communities can be utilised as ways of spreading false information too (e.g. correlations around some US churches and people not believing that Biden won the 2020 election). So I think there are some interesting questions where beliefs end up stemming from meaning breakdown as you describe but also pass through existing communities and signifiers in ways that can reinforce them? I don't know, this isn't a very well formed thought, but I think there's something there.

I found the discussion of your symptoms interesting, too, as someone who suffers from chronic stress-related problems that manifest very physically (especially psoriasis which affects my skin and joints, and chronic gut issues). It is difficult not to worry about symptoms I have and go into some of those spirals, sometimes, even though if I could just not stress then I'd feel better and therefore probably be less stressed. But then one all too easily ends up stressing about not stressing...

Anyway none of that precisely involved aliens, but maybe I'll have more thoughts on those soon too :)

BeerDrinkingBurke:


--- Quote ---I think the question of what we mean by community and how that interacts with information environments is the bit that most interests me. Clearly in a sense some people find community around conspiracist beliefs, and existing communities can be utilised as ways of spreading false information too (e.g. correlations around some US churches and people not believing that Biden won the 2020 election). So I think there are some interesting questions where beliefs end up stemming from meaning breakdown as you describe but also pass through existing communities and signifiers in ways that can reinforce them? I don't know, this isn't a very well formed thought, but I think there's something there.
--- End quote ---


I wonder if the idea of "myth" is helpful here. This is something I'd love to look at more. It's also what Jung seems to be getting at.


As one can see from all this, the observation and interpretation of Ufos have already led to the formation of a regular legend. Quite apart from the thousands of newspaper reports and articles there is now a whole literature on the subject, some of it humbug, some of it serious. The Ufos themselves, however, do not appear to have been impressed; as the latest observations show, they continue their way undeterred. Be that as it may, one thing is certain: they have become a living myth. We have here a golden opportunity of seeing how a legend is formed, and how in a difficult and dark time for humanity a miraculous tale grows up of an attempted intervention by extra-terrestrial “heavenly” powers — and this at the very time when human fantasy is seriously considering the possibility of space travel and of visiting or even invading other planets. We on our side want to fly to the moon or to Mars, and on their side the inhabitants of other planets in our system, or even of the fixed stars, want to fly to us. We at least are conscious of our space-conquering aspirations, but that a corresponding extra-terrestrial tendency exists is a purely mythological conjecture, 1.e., a projection.


I'm currently listening to a podcast called the UFO Rabbit Hole. From what I've listened to so far, the person producing it is a scientifically minded believer. Her episode on the emergence of UFO lore is fairly interesting so far. As well as mentioning the above book and quote by Jung (Note: only got to this point of the podcast after I had posted this quote) She mentions a book called American Cosmic that looks like it might be quite decent.


Here's the blurb.

 
More than half of American adults and more than seventy-five percent of young Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. This level of belief rivals that of belief in God. American Cosmic examines the mechanisms at work behind the thriving belief system in extraterrestrial life, a system that is changing and even supplanting traditional religions.Over the course of a six-year ethnographic study, D.W. Pasulka interviewed successful and influential scientists, professionals, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who believe in extraterrestrial intelligence, thereby disproving the common misconception that only fringe members of society believe in UFOs. She argues that widespread belief in aliens is due to a number of factors including their ubiquity in modern media like The X-Files, which can influence memory, and the believability lent to that media by the search for planets that might support life. American Cosmic explores the intriguing question of how people interpret unexplainable experiences, and argues that media is replacing religion as a cultural authority that offers believers answers about non-human intelligent life.

Although the podcast producer is a believer, following (I assume) the lead of this book, she makes an interesting connection between the emergence of UFO lore in the 1940s and the major intellectual / spiritual shifts that took place in the centuries leading up to it. Particularly the 19th century and the rise of positivism / scientism. Another way of putting it maybe is simply a crisis of meaning (as we see discussed by major figures of continental philosophy like Husserl, but as was already recognized as being on the way by Neitzsche). Many have lost the ability to believe any more in a personal God that intervenes in our affairs. We no longer have these cultural bulwarks of meaning. And instead we have some trying to turn science into a God as the ultimate arbiter of reality / truth. It is here that we see the beginnings of the UFO mythos. It offers a branch to the drowning. There is something "out there". Something beyond. The "truth" is in the skies once more. It appeals to those deeper desires that we have for some global meaning that were satisfied by religion, but in a way that is dressed in the garb of modern scientific ideas and dreams. The podcast producer thinks of this mythos as a reconfiguring of pre-existing real experiences (lights in the sky in ancient texts). So for her, it's  that only in the modern era are we now capable of transfiguring our old experiences in a form that brings it closer to reality. She thinks of the mythos as both true, and not true, at the same time. That UFOs are real phenomena, but that there is then a built up, transfigured mythology that has emerged around it. Regardless, I'd really like to look into this more. I'll start with Jung, and then maybe check out this Pasulka book.


--- Quote ---I found the discussion of your symptoms interesting, too, as someone who suffers from chronic stress-related problems that manifest very physically (especially psoriasis which affects my skin and joints, and chronic gut issues). It is difficult not to worry about symptoms I have and go into some of those spirals, sometimes, even though if I could just not stress then I'd feel better and therefore probably be less stressed. But then one all too easily ends up stressing about not stressing...
--- End quote ---


Oh yes, I had gut issues as well! And, I suspect that some of my upper back issues are also from stress.


As for trying not to be stressed in this day and age... You had me think of a recent comic... ;-)

BeerDrinkingBurke:
Here's an interesting looking book I'd like to check out.
Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect

Here's a content summary from the Amazon page...

--- Quote ---Here is a conclusive, well-researched, practical reference on why people fall down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole and how you can help them escape. Mick West shares the knowledge and experience he’s accumulated debunking false conspiracy theories, and offers a practical guide to helping friends and loved ones recognize these theories for what they really are.
 
The Earth is flat, the World Trade Center collapse was a controlled demolition, planes are spraying poison to control the weather, and actors faked the Sandy Hook massacre…. All these claims are bunk: falsehoods, mistakes, and in some cases, outright lies. But many people passionately believe one or more of these conspiracy theories. They consume countless books and videos, join like-minded online communities, try to convert those around them, and even, on occasion, alienate their own friends and family. Why is this, and how can you help people, especially those closest to you, break free from the downward spiral of conspiracy thinking?
 
Perhaps counter-intuitively, the most successful approaches to helping individuals escape a rabbit hole aren’t comprised of simply explaining why they are wrong; rather, West’s tried-and-tested approach emphasizes clear communication based on mutual respect, honesty, openness, and patience.
 
West puts his debunking techniques and best practices to the test with four of the most popular false conspiracy theories today (Chemtrails, 9/11 Controlled Demolition, False Flags, and Flat Earth) ― providing road maps to help you to understand your friend and help them escape the rabbit hole. These are accompanied by real-life case studies of individuals who, with help, were able to break free from conspiracism.
--- End quote ---

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