Comment by rubyn00bie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rubyn00bie | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Well... I would probably say most of the time it's a combination of stress, bullshit, and someone(s) in denial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases

If I had to guess most of these went down because the child or relative of someone powerful, authoritative, and very disconnected from reality (gullible), did some bullshit the powerful person couldn't reason about. Literally, leaving their brain unable to compute reality instead choosing (and very likely believing) "bat shit" as the reason... Depending on how powerful the person who just skipped-a-beat of reality; the narrative might never be questioned. cough trump cough

I mean; like with UFOs, most of the imagery people use to describe are _known_ to them before the event. They're related to what the person knows and is capable of imagining.

With all that said, I'm not trying to explain them all as bullshit or nonsense; but, the list without the bullshit is a lot smaller. I do think it's a bit unfortunate though as I'd love to speculate and wonder about something besides the trite psuedo-hallucinations all these stories contain.

Does not really apply to radar operators and F16 pilots all having the same "mass hysteria" the same day...

I was going to say this as well. There have been recordings from aircraft hud cams of UFO’s. This doesn’t address the OPs question about hallucinations or hysteria or whatever, but it does give a little credence to a claim of a UFO. I’ve seen a UFO, by definition, something unidentified, unknown, then it was gone.

My grandfather told stories of things he saw flying for Eastern Airlines and later American Airlines. My uncles who flew F-16s all saw strange things too.

Ask any aviator that’s been flying heavy for 10+ years what strange things they have seen and they’ll have some stories.

I’m glad we, as a people, are talking about it, without jumping to conclusions about what these objects are.

There are indeed a handful of truly unidentified and truly interesting cases, but I stress that unidentified does not equate to alien spacecraft. That is an unjustified leap that far too many people are all too willing to make.

Why not? Concluding there is other life out there seems like it would be good for society. Less xenophobia. What’s the harm in that?

I have no problem with that conclusion if it is supported by evidence, but I see a lot of people jumping to that conclusion without any substantive evidence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com