Alien Abductions: Reports, Theories & Stories (Not IHTM)

[Anonymous]

:lol:
When are we going to get to the deep psych theories? oooooooh, can't wait

 

[OldTimeRadio]

The volume of the reports may not matter all that much if those who experienced them already are trying to fit them into a certain mold....

In that case, five reports and half-a-million reports have exactly the same weight. Is there ANY use for statistics?

....although they may be of interest to sociologists and psychologists (assuming most of them can't be written off as sleep-related, etc. problems).

I confess that my view iof sleep disorders seems to be considerably less materialistic and easily-categorizable than yours, so I find it more difficult to simply "write them off.".

And let's not forget that multi-experiencer reports could be folie à deux.

15,000 paired cases of folie a deux, a comparatively rare condition, in one sample? WOW! I'll bet THAT skews the statistics!

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Folie a Deux

There was an interesting case of folie a deux in Manhattan around 1940. A young married man proclaimed himself to be Jesus Christ and convinced both his wife and his mother-in-law of this fact.

The authorities promptly threw all three of 'em into the asylum

Can you imagine the government trying this today?

Any shavetail law school graduate would win the case:

"Your honor, the Roman Catholic Church, with its 800 million members worldwide, enjoys a great deal of political clout and because of this is never persecuted in the American republic. Yet my client, Mr. Christ, IS being persecuted merely because he shepherds a smaller denomination, with a membership of two. Thus my client demands for both himself and his followers those sacred freedoms of religious belief absolutely guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution."

P. S. He convinced his MOTHER-IN-LAW that he was Jesus Christ. "And, yea, verily, this was the First Miracle."

 

[Jerry_B]

In that case, five reports and half-a-million reports have exactly the same weight. Is there ANY use for statistics?

As I said, the amount of people doesn't matter if they're all pre-disposed to thinking that their experiences have something to do with alien abduction (and hence their willingness to report it as such to Streiber). Remember that awhile back abdcution researchers such as Jacobs claimed that millions of Americans had been abducted - a figure they extrapolated from various figures. Big claims just stay as being claims unless there's actual evidence of ET's being responsible for the problem - evidence which has yet to be produced.

I confess that my view iof sleep disorders seems to be considerably less materialistic and easily-categorizable than yours, so I find it more difficult to simply "write them off."

The point is that one should try and look at the evidence presented and see if it matches up with any known disorders, sleep disorders being just one of them. Or are you saying that there's some sort of paranormal element to sleep discorders too?

15,000 paired cases of folie a deux, a comparatively rare condition, in one sample? WOW! I'll bet THAT skews the statistics!

Where do you get the 15,000 figure from?

 

[Anonymous]

Oldtimeradio - Jerry needs proof.

He needs a UFO to land in his back yard and take him away and inject him with some alien stuff so that when he gets back home he can have many rigorous scientific studies done on him to prove that alien stuff was indeed injected into him and that it was not just a hallucination brought about by bad cheese before bedtime.

See?

Proof.

 

[Jerry_B]

It's not that at all In fact, coldelephant, it's quite simple - but you don't seem to have grasped that point:

All I'm saying is that one needs to be guarded about such things - 500,000 people or no. And one has to be especially guarded when that amount of people have contacted someone who's well-known within the field of alien abductions. In this case those people seem to pre-disposing themselves to framing their experiences within the subject of alien abductions.

 

[Dingo667]

I recon too that there is obviously something to be aware of. If these abductions are not real then obviously it must be some other kind of common experience. As it has been mentioned it could be a known psychological phenmenon which has up until now been known as something else. Maybe it has even a physical origin within the brain. The problem with abductions is [as in Morgellons desease - see thread] that mainstream medicine doesn't want to know. The only reason being that the word Alien is used. When soldiers complained about this desease they had developed after the first bout in Iran [can't remember what it was called], it was taken far more serious [if only to evade compensation]. Up until now it is not actually properly outlined and some think it doesn't exist. Imagine these soldiers would have mentioned the "A" word. They could have all been ignored.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Or are you saying that there's some sort of paranormal element to sleep discorders too?

No, I've not changed the opinion I expressed here just a few days back - that sleep disorders MAY act as TRIGGERS for paranormal phenomena.

Where do you get the 15,000 figure from?

As has been mentioned here several times previously, Strieber reported that of the 500,000-plus reports he'd received THIRTY THOUSAND were multiple-experiencer reports.

Assuming (perhaps erroneously) that the vast majority of those 30,000 reports were two-person accounts, I divided the 30,000 figure by two.

That gave me (surprise!) 15,000 pairs of reported experiencers.

Did it all in my head, too. <g>

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Numbers and Satistics

All I really know about numbers and statistics is that I'd sure as hell prefer to see FIVE idiots marching around in the streets with khaki trousers, jack boots, Sam Browne belts and swastika armbands that 500,000....er, plus.

 

[Jerry_B]

But the numbers become pretty much meaningless if that figure reflects an amount of people that already think that what they've experienced may be something to do with alien abductions. To a certain extent, they've already pigeon-holed themselves and compartmentalised their experiences. It's the same as 500,000 people saying they've seen a 'UFO' - even if it's a multi-experiencer sighting, it still could mean that all those people are mistaken and that they bring their belief system into the experience. It doesn't actually mean that they've seen or experienced anything that's either untoward or outside the realms of known disorders, etc.. Basically, the fact that all those pople decided to tell all to Streiber speaks volumes.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

But the numbers become pretty much meaningless if that figure reflects an amount of people that already think that what they've experienced may be something to do with alien abductions. To a certain extent, they've already pigeon-holed themselves and compartmentalised their experiences. It's the same as 500,000 people saying they've seen a 'UFO' - even if it's a multi-experiencer sighting, it still could mean that all those people are mistaken and that they bring their belief system into the experience. It doesn't actually mean that they've seen or experienced anything that's either untoward or outside the realms of known disorders, etc.. Basically, the fact that all those pople decided to tell all to Streiber speaks volumes.

You leave me more and more confused. Would there even BE a UFOlogy if just FIVE (count 'em) individuals had reported weird lights in the skies over the past 60 years rather than many millions? Would anybody "believe in ghosts" if there were just a dozen or so reports throughout history?

You SEEM to be saying that the more putative witnesses who come forward the weaker any case becomes.

So I ask one more time - is there ANY use at all for statistics, if all numbers mean the same thing?

 

[Jerry_B]

No - I'm saying that the fact that all of those people have decided to tell Streiber about their experiences seems to point at their thinking from the outset that they've had an abduction experience. They're already pre-disposing themselves to the consideration that they've had an abduction experience in some shape or form.

 

[Anonymous]

No - I'm saying that the fact that all of those people have decided to tell Streiber about their experiences seems to point at their thinking from the outset that they've had an abduction experience. They're already pre-disposing themselves to the consideration that they've had an abduction experience in some shape or form.

So they're all making it up?

 

[_Lizard23_]

Blimey, you're all making this very heavy going for poor Jerry, who has a perfectly valid point IMO.

Say for example you started hearing voices. You might choose to keep quiet about it in case people thought you were mad and locked you up, but if you decided to do something about it you might a) go to see your doctor or a therapist or you might b) go to see a priest or clairvoyant. Which of those you chose would be dependant on your assumptions about what was happening to you based on your own beliefs. You are going to say either 'help me doc I think I'm losing my mind' or 'help me father I think I am possessed' based on the same experience depending on your personal belief system.

So, the people who wrote to Schreiber saying "OMG, me too, that happened to me! *I* was abducted by aliens" are going to be the people who are inclined to believe that that is what happened to them. They are probably only a percentage of the total number of people who have had the experience. So the group that did contact the UFO guy are totally self-selecting, already believe that is what the experience was and therefore of course their stories fit perfectly with what he was describing.

There could be twenty times as many people who had exactly the same experiences and not only didn't write to Schreiber but don't think it is anything to do with aliens or abduction. They are probably saying things like 'man, I get that sleep paralysis, it is really fucking weird and scary' or 'send for the two-headed doctor, I am being plagued by succubi' or any number of other things that don't chime so well with the alien abduction experience described in Communion.

 

[Jerry_B]

So they're all making it up?

What's so hard to understand? I didn't suggest that they were 'making it up'. What I'm saying is the fact that they've decided to to tell a leading figure within the abduction wing of ufology about their experiences suggests that they already consider those experiences to be linked to abductions in some way. They already perceive these experiences as being within the framework of alien abductions.

 

[Jerry_B]

There could be twenty times as many people who had exactly the same experiences and not only didn't write to Schreiber but don't think it is anything to do with aliens or abduction. They are probably saying things like 'man, I get that sleep paralysis, it is really fucking weird and scary' or 'send for the two-headed doctor, I am being plagued by succubi' or any number of other things that don't chime so well with the alien abduction experience described in Communion.

Yes - one could say that one man's abduction experience is another man's rather more mundane sleep paralysis episode, etc.. But if people take their experiences to someone who's known for his books on alien abduction, then it seems to me that they're already pigeon-holing that experience into a certain theme. One could also say that a certain extent they already are willing to believe that alien abductions actually happen, and thus have no qualms reporting this to someone like Streiber.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I'm saying that the fact that all of those people have decided to tell Streiber about their experiences seems to point at their thinking from the outset that they've had an abduction experience. They're already pre-disposing themselves to the consideration that they've had an abduction experience in some shape or form.

I can't escape this feeling that we're talking at complete cross-purposes.

These people wrote to Strieber because he REQUESTED that they do so! Maybe if YOU'D made that request all those canvas mail sacks would have landed on YOUR doorstep.

The fact still remains that 500,000-plus experiencers reported what they interpreted as "alien abductions." They DID NOT report being raped by palm trees, being serenaded by banjo-playing polar bears, meeting dead Presidents in mountain caves, visiting Atlantis, surfing on the Sun or dissecting Chupacabras.

Thus I continue to find half-a-million (plus) more-or-less consistent reports of ANYTHING more impressive and worthy of objective study than half-a-dozen.

This seems to be where you and I differ.

But again (again and again), it does not mean that these putative adventures actually happened!

 

[Jerry_B]

I'd argue that 'objective study' isn't going to be carried out by someone like Strieber - although I wouldn't be surpsied if he made it all into a new book

 

[barfing_pumpkin]

Okay...so 500,000 people (apparently) read Streiber's book, and became convinced that they themselves had undergone an AA experience.

Bear in mind that, on any given day, 500,000 people (or more, maybe) might consult a medical dictionary, and convince themselves that they have scrofula.

As you can see, when placed in the context of the phenomenon itself, the numbers become pretty meaningless.

 

[Jerry_B]

Perhaps, psycho-socially speaking, you have a large group of people who think that they've had some sort of experience, possibly related to what they think is something to do with alien abduction. IMHO, this doesn't say much more than that.

 

[James_H]

I'm not entirely sure with whom I'm agreeing with here, but I definitely agree that "alien abduction" experiences should not be taken at face value, but investigated rather as a)a general psychic phenonemon analagous with other stuff like demons and SP and b)a piece of modern folklore.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I'd argue that 'objective study' isn't going to be carried out by someone like Strieber - although I wouldn't be surpsied if he made it all into a new book

The tragedy is that that "objective study" isn't likely to be carried out by ANYBODY.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

As you can see, when placed in the context of the phenomenon itself, the numbers become pretty meaningless.

So you're agreeing that half-a-dozen witnesses to Phenomenon X and half-a-million are pretty much the same thing?

 

[OldTimeRadio]

...."alien abduction" experiences should....be....investigated....as a)a general psychic phenonemon analagous with other stuff like demons and SP and b)a piece of modern folklore.

Thank you for contributing some genuine common sense to this discussion. I especially agreed with point A.

But let me quibble just a bit over your "folklore" position. "Alien Abduction" testimonies tend to be FIRST-PERSON accounts, whatever that many ultimately mean. "Folkloric" stories on the other hand tend to start out "This is definitely a true story, because it happened to my best friend's cousin's barber's accountant's lawyer's butler's minister's wife's brother."

PS. And SP is probably not a psychic phenomenon, per se. What is seems to do, at least in my opinion, is to occasionally act as a trigger FOR psychic phenomena.

 

[rynner2]

Q.4(b) Discuss the origin and the development of the 'alien abduction' meme.

You have 40 minutes. Only write on one side of the paper.

 

[Jerry_B]

But let me quibble just a bit over your "folklore" position. "Alien Abduction" testimonies tend to be FIRST-PERSON accounts, whatever that many ultimately mean. "Folkloric" stories on the other hand tend to start out "This is definitely a true story, because it happened to my best friend's cousin's barber's accountant's lawyer's butler's minister's wife's brother."

Urban folklore tends to work in that way, but not folklore in more general terms. There are folkloric elements to alien abduction as it's generally told - as I've said earlier, different cultures over time have interpreted the experience in different ways, and that continues today. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's any sort of on-going 'psychic' phenomena either.

As to whether SP triggers any sort of 'psychic' phenomena, one would have to ask if that is just as illusory as the experience is in itself in more general terms.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Q.4(b) Discuss the origin and the development of the 'alien abduction' meme. You have 40 minutes. Only write on one side of the paper.

I don't know, but it probably started with an amoeba 3-point-five billion years ago.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

As to whether SP triggers any sort of 'psychic' phenomena, one would have to ask if that is just as illusory as the experience is in itself in more general terms.

I suppose it's possible that everything is illusory and nothing is true, in which case this entire discussion becomes more and more and more meaningless - on BOTH sides.

 

[Jerry_B]

You may want to have a look at the Magonia website...

 

[OldTimeRadio]

You may want to have a look at the Magonia website...

Yes, I've spent many pleasant hours on Magonia, reading and downloading much. But I hadn't been for some time, and there seems to be a lot of new material, so thanks much for the link.