Yeah, people misremember, mix stories, and see patterns where there aren’t any. That’s real. And yeah, without proper context, fast-looking objects can be slow, close things viewed from a weird angle. Parallax is a thing.
But here’s the catch you can’t explain all of it that way. Not when pilots are tracking objects on radar, visually confirming them, and FLIR is picking up thermal signatures… all at once. That’s not just someone misremembering. That’s a stack of sensors saying: “Something was there.”
And when you say, “if it can mess with our minds, how do we see it at all?”
That question kind of answers itself. Maybe we see it because it wants to be seen just enough. Like it’s playing at the edge of perception, not screwing up, but doing it on purpose. Not hiding badly, revealing strategically.
You ever get the sense a dream wanted you to remember it?
This stuff isn’t about proof in the lab. It’s about whatever’s out there brushing past the veil, just enough to stir something. If it’s real and it might be we’re not chasing tech. We’re in the middle of a conversation we barely understand.
Not everything can be explained, often because the captured evidence just isn’t complete, or is not sufficiently detailed. Some of the things that can’t be explained may indeed be previously unobserved phenomena - ‘sprites’ that appear in the upper atmosphere during thunderstorms, for example, were at first a rarely reported and sketchy phenomenon that seemed a bit fantastical, until they were observed and studied more.
But with regard to the collection of cases you’re talking about, if, say, half of them have very simple explanations, they just shouldn’t be on the table for discussion as examples of ‘the phenomenon’ - and yet, they consistently are. And the reason for this is, in significant part, those are the cases where there was a ‘stack of sensor’ evidence. They are included as padding to make the whole paranormal thing sound like it’s more than it is.
If you take those out of the picture, it significantly erodes the appearance that there actually is any collection of well-observed, well-recorded, but unexplained incidents that are supposedly part of ‘the phenomenon’.
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.
Alright but here’s where I think you’re missing the point with Vallée.
He’s not saying “a wizard did it.” He’s saying: “Maybe the framework itself is wrong.” That’s not hand-waving it’s a call to rethink the entire interface between reality and perception. The ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis) assumes nuts-and-bolts craft, spacefaring aliens, and straightforward contact logic. Vallée just says: what if that model doesn’t fit the data?
Yeah, the humanoid appearance is weird. The inconsistent behavior is weird. But that’s not a reason to toss the whole thing out, it’s a reason to ask whether we’re dealing with something that doesn’t want to be understood in clean, physicalist terms. Trickster isn’t just mythology, it’s a metaphor for phenomena that defy reduction, that behave intentionally irrationally, if that even makes sense.
Now, the psychosocial hypothesis? Useful. Part of the picture. Mass delusion, hoaxes, folklore, misperception, totally real. But does that explain:
multi-sensor tracking events?
craft moving in ways that break known physics?
recurring patterns going back thousands of years with structural consistency?
If this were just psychological or cultural noise, it wouldn’t leave physical traces. It wouldn’t jam radar. It wouldn’t make the U.S. government whisper about “adversarial unknowns.”
Cui bono? That’s the wrong question. The Phenomenon might not be “a faction” or “a race.” It could be something incompatible with our concept of motivation. Maybe it doesn’t care about contact. Maybe it’s not about us at all.
Vallée’s not offering closure. He’s warning us that expecting closure might be the trap.
I agree with this but take the exact opposite conclusion from it.
ITSM that those glomming on to these … hypotheses … are unrealistically looking for closure, instead of accepting that there will always be natural and rationally understandable occurrences that we are not currently understanding, that the more we understand the more we have that is yet to understand.
Those who lived years back who did not understand why eclipses occurred and had no explanation to offer did not have to accept the story told by others that it was because a god was angry and would require a human sacrifice, or that the older odd lady was a witch and did it.
Human knowledge does not get to closure. Rushing to fill in the gaps with fantasy that is not falsifiable ( the ones suggested or it is all a simulation, prove it wrong, whatever) is falling for the trap of unrealistically expecting closure.
First you need to supply data. Right now, the vast, vast majority of the supposed data is handwaving, nonsense, and misreported. There is a tiny subset of data that is inconclusive and/or incomplete, but is within the margins of error. If Vallée wants to reevaluate our entire framework of perception and reality he’s going to have to start with something much more substantial.
This is the definition of handwaving. He is unhappy with the Extraterrestrial hypothesis (and quite rightly so, since it is garbage) and has replaced it with an option which is even less falsifiable. No matter how absurd these reports might be, the extradimensional hypothesis can accommodate them, because fairies.
If you have a good one, please post it. The onese you posted previously (USS Princeton, GIMBAL, GOFAST, Tehran, do not stand up to detailed scrutiny, as Mick West and Co have demonstrated.
If you have a good one, please post it. So far, all the examples I’ve seen have been misinterpretations of inadequate data. It is an extraordinary feature of these sightings that they always happen at the very edge of sensor range, where the recorded data is inconclusive. How do the UFO operators know where to fly so they are almost out of sensor range? As our sensors get better, they get further away. Back in the 1950s, they were flying within range of our box cameras. Now they fly tens of kilometres away, or more.
I’ve looked into the ‘ancient alien reports’ in some detail, and none of them stand up to scrutiny. Vallée’s interpretation of this data is so shockingly bad that it is embarrassing. But he is a believer, and believes in extradimensional wizards and fairies, so what do you expect?
Apparently they all stand up to scrutiny quite nicely…as long as they are never examined. Once they are examined, at most they will be temporarily put aside.
Until the next time the topic is brought up, then they will be brought up again is if the original explanation never happened at all.
I used to quite value Vallée’s opinion, since he was once quite a competent scientist. But my opinion of his work has depreciated greatly, especially since he started banging on about the 1945 Trinity hoax, which he admits includes some falsehoods (i.e., some of it is a fabrication; what he fails to acknowledge is that it didn’t happen at all).
Recently he has also been discussing some curious stigmata and scars that have been appearing on people’s arms around the world; it turns out these are nothing more than hairdryer burns.
But it is worse than that; right back at the beginning of his career (in 1961) he claims to have witnessed the cover-up of the sightings of an unidentified satellite; his superior at the observatory ‘destroyed the tapes’ containing the calculated orbital elements of this ‘object’ (which presumably proved it was non-human advanced technology). I cannot believe that this tape contained all the evidence, none of which has since been recovered; at the time, innumerable amateur and professional astronomers were out every night observing the first batch of satellites placed into orbit by mankind. These observers would also have seen this supposed satellite - but there are no records of it. One single astronomer in France can’t destroy all the records of observations in every country.
For these reasons, I no longer take anything Vallée says at face value - the man is an idiot.
Sometimes I find myself really annoyed at my wife. Sometimes it’s because of one particular thing she’s done that’s frustrated me, and I can point to that one thing, and we can talk about it and come to some sort of resolution. Other times, it’s more of a pattern of things than any one thing. And in those cases, it’s always me who has the problem: when I calm down, I realize that really I was sleepy, or hungry, or hormonal, or something else. I blame a “pattern” in those cases because there isn’t any real thing to point at.
That’s the strong vibe I’m getting here, and from a lot of suspect arguments. When there is strong evidence, people offer the single strongest evidence for their claim at a given time. When there’s very weak evidence, people claim a pattern, so that refuting any single piece of weak evidence doesn’t invalidate the claim.
What’s the single strongest piece of evidence for this claim? And if that piece of evidence can be explained without positing a Phenomenon, how will that affect your thinking on the subject, @Ryan_Liam ?
You say Vallée’s hypothesis is “a wizard did it” because it’s less falsifiable than ETH. But the truth is, neither is falsifiable in the clean Popperian sense, not when we’re dealing with anomalies that straddle consciousness, perception, and sensor data. You’re calling for empirical clarity in a domain that’s by definition murky.
Vallée’s not offering a lab-tested model, he’s saying we might be looking at the wrong categories altogether. It’s not about proving fairies. It’s about noticing that the phenomena often behave in ways that resemble folkloric, symbolic, or liminal experiences, which is weird as hell, yeah, but not meaningless. Maybe that is the message.
And sure, psychosocial explanations cover a lot of ground. They’re necessary. But they’re also convenient, because they let you stop digging the moment things get complex. “It’s all misinterpretation” is a closed loop unless you’re open to what might be left over after the hoaxes and noise are cleared.
On sensor data: yeah, Mick West has explanations. Some good, some weak, some assumptions wrapped in certainty. But you can’t tell me every pilot, every radar tech, every thermal readout, across decades and countries, all fold neatly into “bad data.” That’s just reverse handwaving.
On ancient reports: no one’s saying a UFO landed in Sumeria with blinking lights. The point is the structural resonance—beings from the sky, sudden disappearances, luminous objects, time distortion. You can wave it off as coincidental narrative recycling, or you can ask why it keeps happening.
And this bit:
“As sensors get better, the UFOs get further away.”
Honestly? That’s one of the most compelling reasons not to dismiss it. That implies an awareness of our capabilities. That’s not nothing. That’s patterned behavior in response to human observation systems.
You don’t have to like Vallée. But he’s not the problem. The problem is assuming that a phenomenon acting outside your framework must be false instead of foreign.
If you’re gonna be skeptical, be brave about it. Don’t just tear down bad ideas. Ask why the mystery is so persistent in the first place.
Okay. If folks are able to come up with a persuasive explanation more plausible than The Phenomenon, how will that affect your thinking about The Phenomenon?
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?
To follow up on my previous question: I’d like you to click this link, but only after you have answered the previous question.
Again: if this can be explained persuasively using existing phenomena, how will that change your thinking about The Phenomenon? Again, this is the one example you offered when asked for the “most compelling” case. If it turns out that this has a mundane explanation, are you amenable to changing your mind about the Phenomenon?
I mentioned this one in an earlier post. It has been demonstrated by the people at Metabunk that the object was filmed from a moving helicopter, but was itself almost completely stationary, and drifting with the wind; this is consistent with a balloon, or most likely a fire lantern. West found several occasions when fire lanterns (so-called Chinese lanterns) were released in that area during weddings and other celebrations. On occasion the image of the lantern is so indistinct, some UFO proponents say it disappears into the distant ocean; in reality it is still there, but too faint to register on the camera - then it comes back, moving in exactly the same way and in the same direction as before.
Precisely.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the object ‘dives’ into the water; instead it just carries on in a straight line, and fades out temporariliy. This is not the behaviour of a ‘transmedium’ object; it is the behaviour of a barely visible object that is right at the limits of detectability.
Excellent; another confirmation of the fire lantern theory.
There is no external phenomenon, originating in another dimension; this Phenomenon is an important and interesting one, but it has its roots in human perception and belief systems.
