Most UFO and abduction researchers probably have an idea of what they are looking for before they speak to witnesses. This invariably guides the interview. Recently, some MUFON representatives have claimed their field investigators are now specifically instructed and trained to not ask leading questions. This is a great step, but the investigator may not even need to lead the witness that much, because already they know that the investigator is there to ask them about their UFO encounter, and the image given to us by popular culture is already assuming that the questioner is asking about aliens from other planets. This may be even more implicit when witnesses speak about abductions.
Karim Nader, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, has proposed that the very act of remembering causes errors to creep into our recall. Journalist Greg Miller wrote in a 2010 article from Smithsonian magazine:
… it may be impossible for humans or any other animal to bring a memory to mind without altering it in some way. Nader thinks it’s likely that some types of memory, such as a flashbulb memory, are more susceptible to change than others. Memories surrounding a major event like September 11 might be especially susceptible, he says, because we tend to replay them over and over in our minds and in conversation with others—with each repetition having the potential to alter them.
Nader and his colleagues have termed this “memory reconsolidation:”
… recalling the experience to other people may allow distortions to creep in. “When you retell it, the memory becomes plastic, and whatever is present around you in the environment can interfere with the original content of the memory,” [postdoctoral researcher Oliver] Hardt says.
Nader suggests that this might be a coping mechanism that the brain uses to make memory useful, rather than accurate. Again from the Smithsonian article:
[mental] editing might be another way to learn from experience. If fond memories of an early love weren’t tempered by the knowledge of a disastrous breakup, or if recollections of difficult times weren’t offset by knowledge that things worked out in the end, we might not reap the benefits of these hard-earned life lessons. Perhaps it’s better if we can rewrite our memories every time we recall them. Nader suggests that reconsolidation may be the brain’s mechanism for recasting old memories in the light of everything that has happened since. In other words, it might be what keeps us from living in the past.14
But what about the initial impressions we receive from our visual system? Could those be wrong as well?
Illustration adapted from Donald Hoffman, Visual Intelligence:
How We Create What We See. 1998, WW Norton. p. 3.
The diagram above is an illustration of a perception experiment called “The Magic Square.” Look at the pattern on the left. You should see a well-defined square appear in the middle of the slanted lines. It may even appear brighter than the background. As we move to the second figure, it appears that the square is not as defined as the first one. When we arrive at the pattern on the right, the perceived square has almost or completely disappeared.
What this suggests is that our mode of perceiving visual input is very adept at filling in what is not there, and may be a way for our brains to quickly analyze the environment by extrapolating what isn’t there with something that should be (or that we expect) much of the time. In essence, the less information we are presented with (or can comprehend) the more our minds fill in the blanks with what is expected, or at least what we can comprehend.
This, taken with the research on the susceptibility of memory recall to external (and internal) influences, suggests that the implications for UFO close encounter witnesses and abductees are significant. There is a distinct possibility that whatever is happening to people, from complete illusion to actual contact with non-human entities, may be so far removed from the original experience that we are starting with compromised recall even before the witness talks about it, and extrapolating even further as they describe their encounter to a UFO researcher. Whatever is seen is so well-hidden behind a wall of expectations, perceptual errors and reconstituted memories that any supposed intelligence behind it doesn’t need to fool us, control our minds or cover up our memories with other ones.
Is it possible that we really make up what we are seeing, or at least edit it heavily based on our evolutionary heritage?
Donald D. Hoffman is Professor of Cognitive Science at UC Irvine and is the author of a book entitled Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See. He has proposed an evolutionary model of perception that says humans have developed a sense of reality that is rooted in our survival rather than the reality of what is there. In other words, our ways of seeing were not evolved to see things as they are, but to see things in a way that ensured fitness for the species. In fact, Hoffman has developed actual equations of evolutionary survivability that take into account environment, threats, resources, physical state of the organism, and a few other factors. He tested them to make sure that they were consistent with real world data and then started to run computer simulations of differing scenarios. About these experiments, he said: “Across thousands of simulated trials, fitness or survival trumped reality in every case. All organisms that saw only what was best for their survival beat out the rest that saw reality as it was or partially as it was.”15
What this suggests is that we have evolved our perceptions to deal with factors that give us the best chance to deal with threats or needs, and ignore the rest of the input from our senses. Hoffman also says that we are looking at things one step or more removed from reality (see McMoneagle quote above) and compares our experience of the world to a computer: “Evolution has given us an interface that hides reality and guides adaptive behavior.”16 He compares it to a computer desktop with the observation that “physical objects are simply icons on that desktop.” The icons of files are only representations of the data stored in the computer. They are not the physical hard drive, the memory, and all the integrated circuits, etc. that comprise the computer itself. That information is not useful to us. The data and how we access it is what is important. Hoffman is suggesting that physical objects as we perceive them are not the real physical objects in reality, but what we perceive as useful to us. They are approximations of that reality.
He concludes that, “Reality is like a 3D desktop that is designed to hide the real world and guide adaptive behavior.” And that “the desktop is not there to show us the reality of the computer, it’s there to hide the reality.”17
A snarky person could suggest that if Hoffman thinks physical objects are not what we perceive, then he should test his theory by jumping in front of a moving train. He responds that the visual representation of the train he sees is a great approximation of what the train actually is. It will still hurt him if he gets hit, in the same way that if you throw away the icon on your desktop that represents a file, you have lost all the work that went into it, even though it is only an electronic or graphic representation of the data and not the data itself.
So, how does this inform our concerns here? What do people see when they are witnessing an unknown object or consciousness or strange paranormal scene?
It would seem that the most important thing our minds would be concerned with when we see a UFO close up is any sort of threat to our survival. Quickly, issues start to arise, such as “How close is it?” or “Is it going to hurt or kill me?” At that point, the witness’ brain is furiously trying to figure out if the unknown object or being or whatever it is could be a threat. Since there are no precedents in their lives for what is happening, the mind will latch on to the most familiar or recognizable scenario, or make one up. Then, in the remembering or retelling, the witness’ mind may subtly change events as described previously. Many encounters seem to follow dream logic, which is at least within the psyche’s experience. In this way, the experience of the paranormal can also be seen as an information-rich event that the mind organizes into its own version of reality and recalls and retells to itself in order to make sense of the exp
erience, no matter what was going on in the local environment at the time.
Almost a decade ago, the late writer, researcher and transhumanist Mac Tonnies said, “I have this hunch that this [UFO] phenomenon comes from some sort of domain of pure information, and the fact that it can interact with us at all suggests that we also inhabit a domain of pure information.”18 This was a most prescient statement. Until recently, scientists have regarded mass and energy as the primary building blocks of nature. Now, some are beginning to regard information as the basic currency of reality. This may be following a trend in science that stretches back over 3000 years.
In ancient Greece, surveying equipment and musical instruments were regarded as the pinnacle of technology, and the Greeks thought of the universe as a series of geometrical relationships and musical harmony. This idea held sway until just after the Renaissance when clockwork mechanisms had reached a high level of development. At that time, people like Isaac Newton thought of the cosmos as a deterministic clock that ran on a precise schedule like a machine. In the 19th century, the steam engine was the rage and scientists at the time thought of the universe as an almost infinite heat machine, gradually running out of fuel and collapsing. A combination of these ideas ruled popular science until just about 90 years ago, when ideas of quantum physics entered the picture. Now, those theories and quantum computing are becoming the new models of how reality is conceptualized, perhaps as a vast information processing system, with us at the center of it.19
The concept of quantum computing relies on having the data not only stored in a state of on or off, 0 or 1, as in the computers and phones and tablets everyone uses, but in both states at once. In this way, it can store much more data and perform potentially trillions of computations per second. In theory, it can represent all values of a computation simultaneously and solve certain problems extremely quickly, since it is essentially working on all possibilities at once. These devices are in their infancy and the very first functioning examples have appeared only in the last few months. The theory behind their operation derives from the quantum physics models of entanglement (where the measurement of one particle can affect another irrespective of location) and superposition of states (which says that probabilities of multiple quantum states can be combined) and which are used as the basis to store and analyze data. Probabilities are collapsed when the problem is solved.
In a crude analogy, perhaps the UFO witness may be involved in a strange scenario where the possibility of an improbable event becomes real when they witness or get near it, and that it could evolve in an infinite number of directions until the witness collapses the probability by observation.
This is not to say that we are living in some sort of vast computer simulation, a concept that tabloid science has been drooling over recently. The idea may be closer to Hoffman’s concept of perceived objects being like, but not what they are. However, the proponents of information theory are not asserting that the model is a metaphor, but that reality may comprise countless bits of information at a basic level.
Information theory studies the quantification of information. In 1990, the famous American physicist John Archibald Wheeler (who worked on the Manhattan Project and the hydrogen bomb) said that he was beginning to suspect that what we experience as reality is directly and intimately connected to our observation of it, which he termed the “Participatory Anthropic Principle.” In simplified form, this is the theory that all physical things arise from a background of infinite possibilities and are quantified only when they are observed—the so-called “it from bit” idea.
In 1990, Wheeler explained in his book A Journey Into Gravity and Spacetime:
… every it—every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself—derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom—a very deep bottom, in most instances—an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.20
So, what is done to the “bit” that transforms into “it” when someone sees a UFO (or perhaps even other paranormal phenomena)? Perhaps at that point, the witness is so close to a unique realm or field of infinite possibility, that a quick and almost random series of decisions are made as to the form that the probability will take, that it has no time to be checked against what “should” be there. If we are thinking in terms of an external, non-human intelligence or consciousness, they may be far more conversant with this concept than we are. There is even the possibility (alluded to earlier) that the result is some sort of true co-creation with an external consciousness. The concepts examined so far indicate that anomalous experience is not well-supported by a physics-based view of reality, but is almost a certainty in an informational one.
It appears to some of us that aliens are coming to our planet in structured craft and occasionally taking some of us out of our beds at night to perform strange experiments and sometimes say and do other nonsensical things. In the infinite realm of possibilities, and in our version of reality and the cosmos, this is highly improbable, but not completely impossible. There is also the possibility that we have created this by our expectations and evolutionary heritage of perception, and it is akin to, but not what is actually happening. The reality of it may either be so foreign to our way of thinking or even conceptualizing that this is the closest we can get at this point.
Can we get ourselves out of the equation to see the phenomenon for what it really is, if there is such a thing? If there is a non-human consciousness interacting with us, occasionally, there is probably no way to see them except in relation to us. Any theorizing about their motivations or methods is doomed because it may be self-reflexive at such a basic level as to be meaningless.
There is the old idea that God created the universe in order to see what not being God was like. There was no yardstick for a supreme being’s existence until not existing as a supreme being was a possibility. Something similar may be operating here. From the “aliens” (or whatever they are’s) point of view, we may not exist except when there is some sort of interaction, and they either accidentally or deliberately create scenarios where we can interact.
I will repeat that I am not trying to “explain away” UFO experiences here. I have never encountered any unidentified flying object at close range, or had what is classically called an “abduction” experience. If I do, someday, there is the possibility that I will be so overwhelmed by my experience that I will immediately switch over to the standard view that aliens from other planets have told me the Truth and that all of this is just silly intellectual games. If that ever happens, I hope that I can maintain my philosophical distance, and still be able to speculate freely on what I saw.
The issues discussed here are essentially beliefs and theories about the phenomenon based on years of observations and data. The area I want to inhabit if I do have a close encounter is a third category that is neither belief nor the certainty of knowing, but that keeps me in between opinions about what happened, because I can never be sure if my conclusions can reflect any concrete external reality. As we have seen, there may be no way that we can have uncompromised access to this external reality, and it may not actually exist until we come to the end of a long line of incalculable questions about what it is.
There is also the issue that science can’t answer everything yet, especially questions of how UFOs and paranormal phenomena affect witnesses on an emotional level and how these may change their lives. This aspect is usually forgotten in a rush for some sort of respectability by hamstringing UFO study into a supposedly scientific framework. Many close encounter witnesses have their outlook, beliefs, and even
their entire lives changed by one short encounter with the unknown. It involves issues that can’t be quantified in a chart or narrowed down in a questionnaire. Perhaps the very act of trying to quantify these life-changing issues robs them of their meaning. It is an area ripe for research by someone who can perhaps forego the making of charts and graphs and instead focus on the documentation of each story as a piece in some sort of larger puzzle that engages our emotional makeup.
Whitley Strieber once mentioned that he heard an extraordinary statement from a government insider who said that what they were trying to suppress in the 1950s and later was belief in the visitors, because the more we believed in them, the more chance they had to get at us in some way. He wrote that it was either his deduction, or that he was told by his visitors, that interaction was being performed in the most democratic way possible, literally from the bottom up, by contacting people on an individual basis and letting their personalities and perceptions be affected as a way to introduce us to the idea of contact.
We don’t need to take these statements completely literally, and, in fact, as we have seen, many issues of perception, memory, and even the basis of reality may not be literal (at least by popular definition) at all. They do, however reinforce the idea that we shoulder the main responsibility for our thoughts, theories, and feelings about non-human consciousness, whatever form it takes. Perhaps by looking within and at the human mind, our senses, and how we remember things, we can better calibrate our main instrument for measuring UFO encounters. This can only lead to a better understanding of the relationship we have with this mystery and, perhaps, any intelligence that may be associated with it.
DISCOVERING OUR HUMANITY IN THE ALIEN OTHER
UFOs- Reframing the Debate Page 27