# The Phenomenon: What is it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 20, 2025, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583 "2025-05-20T13:19:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 18
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/341 "2025-05-30T17:08:19Z")
> [@CoolHandCox](#): > > I think someone explicitly asked for examples. Just curious. I’d go so far as to say there’s been a pattern of people explicitly asking for examples. And here’s how a pattern works. I made a claim about a pattern. Patterns are made up of elements. That means if there’s a pattern, I should be able to point to specific, defensible examples of people asking for examples. If I can’t point to specific instances of my pattern, my claim about a pattern is nonsense. > [@DocCathode](#): > > (and I assume other Dopers) want names, dates, locations, details and data. You have not provided any of that either. > [@Mangetout](#): > > Cite **ONE** very well observed and documented case where the evidence is still available for scrutiny (and doesn’t just comprise a bald assertion that ‘many people saw it’), and let’s discuss that. Put your best evidence on the table and let’s see it. > [@Telemark](#): > > First you need to supply data. > [@eburacum45](#): > > If you have a good one, please post it. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > What’s the single strongest piece of evidence for this claim? > [@Czarcasm](#): > > I think that you have been asked for your _best_ solid case, because this would eliminate the possibility of something else being brought up if this one doesn’t pan out, and so on, and so on. Is this one the best solid case you can give us? I’ll defend any one of those examples as being part of the pattern I’m claiming. But, if you ask for just a single strong example, I’ll take the quote from @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness as the most defensible example. That’s how you defend a claim about a pattern. ---
**Author:** ![CoolHandCox](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coolhandcox/32/16233_2.png) [@CoolHandCox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CoolHandCox)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/342 "2025-05-30T17:23:59Z")
Got it. I’m satisfied with the UFO stuff. I think the pattern made up of individual events layout is pretty persuasive. I was asking about non-UFO to see what types of evidence would be presented. I’d guess, they are all eye-witness stuff and do not involve any non-objective proof such as photos, videos, weird biology or tech, etc. I think there was a mention of an implant of uranium or something and that would be objective, but I don’t think that proof exists anymore (assuming it ever did). ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/343 "2025-05-30T17:40:47Z")
I think there’s truth in the saying ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’ and whilst we could argue about exactly what standard ‘extraordinary’ really represents, it certainly seems like it ought to be more that a few pixels in some grainy footage _that could be anything_, plus excited vicalisations of _some guy_, plus a weird instrument blip that may or may not have happened at around about the same time. The ‘pattern’ here is: shitty blurry footage is shitty and blurry. It’s a tautology. Why are all the things that happened at the limits of our recording so weird and blurry?, because that’s what ‘limit’ means. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/344 "2025-05-30T17:42:40Z")
…but _never_ dismissed, apparently. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/345 "2025-05-30T18:16:22Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > The ‘pattern’ here is: shitty blurry footage is shitty and blurry. It’s a tautology. Why are all the things that happened at the limits of our recording so weird and blurry? And, upthread at one point, the OP made the hypothesis (paraphrasing here) that “maybe these extra-dimensional beings are tricksters, and are intentionally staying right at the limits of our sensing technology and visual acuity.” Which, to me, demonstrates the “I want to believe” mindset, and a deep need to make a supernatural story fit the limited data, rather than the various mundane explanations which have been provided to him in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/346 "2025-05-30T18:33:46Z")
That explanation is the equivalent of “Last Thursdayism”, in that we cannot prove we all didn’t come into existence last Thursday with all memory implanted and all scientific evidence faked. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/347 "2025-05-30T18:35:59Z")
That’s obviously false, since it was a week ago Tuesday. Prove me wrong! You just don’t have an open mind about week-ago-Tuesday-ism. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/348 "2025-05-30T18:42:57Z")
Also, if the trickster-aliens are good at staying beyond the scope of our investigation, it’s kind of pointless talking about them. We could hypothesise that my blue shirt turns pink when nobody is looking, but that just means to all intents and purposes, it’s a blue shirt. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/349 "2025-05-30T18:58:59Z")
Imagine a universe where, instead of Occam’s Razor, we have Awesome’s Razor: the explanation that is most awesome is probably the right one. In that universe, I’m 100% behind the Phenomenon hypothesis. And if I remember Libertarian’s modal ontological proof of God correctly, Awesome’s Razor posits that the awesomest Awesome’s Razor is the one in which everything in all universes operates according to Awesome’s Razor, which means it operates in this universe also because it’d be less awesome if it didn’t, which means that I’ve finally accepted the Phenomenon. QE muthafuckin D! ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/350 "2025-05-30T19:01:12Z")
Welcome to _The Black Hole Of Circular Reasoning_, where you can check out any time you want, but you can never leave. 😁 ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/351 "2025-05-30T20:04:57Z")
> [@CoolHandCox](#): > > I was asking about non-UFO to see what types of evidence would be presented. I’d guess, they are all eye-witness stuff and do not involve any non-objective proof such as photos, videos, weird biology or tech, etc There are (reportedly) poltergeist phenomena but they are brief, transient and non-reproducible (at least on demand) and so are 100% anecdotal accounts. And given the ubiquity of digital and practical effects fakery it’s uncertain whether video could be taken at face value. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/352 "2025-05-30T20:06:32Z")
The interesting coincidences in the video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9xw3KmCF-A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9xw3KmCF-A) are more unlikely, it would seem, than anything discussed so far in this thread. That doesn’t mean that they necessarily mean anything. There are gazillions of things in the universe that can compared. Some of them will have a bunch of characteristics that they can match on. It’s not that big a deal that some of these things match on a number of characteristics. Years ago someone wrote to either Dear Abby or to Ann Landers (I no longer remember which) asking about the coincidences between Lincoln and Kennedy. I wrote to that column pointing out that there are many things that could match between Lincoln and Kennedy and it’s not surprisingly that some of them do. My letter was published. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2025, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/353 "2025-05-30T20:08:49Z")
There’s a Spurious Correlations website that tracks things that so far have been remarkably coincidental even though there’s zero possible connection between them. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2025, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/354 "2025-05-31T14:55:33Z")
A while back there was some group that claimed to have a machine that could predict significant news events - from memory it was a random number generator that just sat churning out data and when there was some supposedly mathematically significant pattern (I dunno, like a run of 9s or something), the operators of the machine would check the world news, pick the worst event, then say ‘see? It must have been that!’ ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2025, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/355 "2025-05-31T17:39:58Z")
Not to mention wrong in many ways, the first “coincidence” one was about the number people dying after working in the Omen movie (just about 5 and explicable just by statistics), when the one that was the most cursed one was Howard Hugh’s _The Conqueror_. > **[Super dangerous movies](https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/some-of-the-most-dangerous-movies-ever/4/)** > > Making movies can be a scary business; 20 of the most dangerous films ever made > In 1956, “The Conqueror” was filmed on location in St. George, Utah, just 137 miles away from a Nevada test site where the United States had conducted above-ground nuclear weapons testing three years before. In the years that followed, many of the film’s principal actors and crew members came down with various forms of cancer. > > The film’s director Dick Powell was diagnosed in 1963. Mexican actor Pedro Armendariz was diagnosed in 1960. And the film’s stars Susan Hayward, John Wayne and Agnes Moorehead all died of cancer in the 1970s. > > Of the film’s 220 cast and crew members, 91 developed cancer and 46 ultimately died of the disease. Pedro Armendariz was actually told that his cancer was terminal, and he shot himself before dying of cancer. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2025, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/356 "2025-05-31T22:26:38Z")
Absolutely, here’s a grounded version: Yes, there are non-UFO examples that seem to share key characteristics with what people call “The Phenomenon.” Across different times and cultures, people have reported strange events with recurring elements things like: Unexplained lights or orbs Missing time Encounters with unusual beings Sudden changes in perception or environment These show up not just in UFO reports, but also in older folklore (like fairy encounters), religious visions (e.g. Fatima), and psychological experiences (like sleep paralysis). The point isn’t to say they’re all the same thing, or to jump to a single explanation, it’s that certain patterns repeat: odd behavior, high emotional intensity, and events that seem to blur the line between internal and external. That’s worth investigating, regardless of whether you think it’s aliens, misperception, or something else. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2025, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/357 "2025-05-31T22:30:06Z")
The issue isn’t magic or conscious evasion it’s how our perception and tech intersect. Sensors at the edge of sensitivity pick up anomalies; trained observers try to make sense of them. Sometimes they match up, sometimes they don’t. That doesn’t mean the phenomena are alien or extradimensional, but it also doesn’t mean there’s nothing happening. The consistent pattern isn’t just “blurry lights far away” it’s just enough signal to provoke real curiosity, not conclusive data. That ambiguity is frustrating, yes, but dismissing it outright assumes we’ve already exhausted every possible explanation, and history says we rarely have. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2025, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/358 "2025-05-31T22:35:23Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > There are gazillions of things in the universe that can compared. I meant: There are gazillions of things in the universe that can be compared. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2025, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/359 "2025-05-31T22:35:51Z")
It’s not about clinging to mystery it’s about identifying where knowledge ends and assumption begins. I didn’t assert “The Phenomenon”; I challenged the reflex to close the case on incomplete data. Yes, pattern-matching can mislead, but so can the rush to dismissal. “Most likely” isn’t the same as “settled.” Science moves forward by staying curious even when answers are messy. And I’ve been through this before from climate debates to UAP claims. The real issue isn’t whether we’re looking; it’s how easily we stop. I looked and found less certainty, not more. That’s worth saying out loud. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2025, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/360 "2025-05-31T22:42:47Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > It’s not about clinging to mystery it’s about identifying where knowledge ends and assumption begins. I didn’t assert “The Phenomenon”; I challenged the reflex to close the case on incomplete data. Straw man again, I have never said to close the case, as it is becoming usual, you are ignoring that more recent info is continuously looked at. That is coming snake eyes for the Phenomenon is not my problem. > [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > And I’ve been through this before from climate debates to UAP claims. The real issue isn’t whether we’re looking; it’s how easily we stop. I looked and found less certainty, not more. That’s worth saying out loud. Well, that was another argument from ignorance. The ones reaching for more uncertainty are the ones denying climate change. That there is more uncertainty for the Phenomenon, is related to new evidence showing that what was reported is less likely nowadays to had aliens or faeries. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583.md?page=17) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583.md?page=19)