My Disbelief Fell Off the Suspension Hook

I just finished the 2009 film "The Fourth Kind".  The film is a supernatural UFO horror film, told in a mockumentary style that attempts to interleave dramatizations with 'found footage'.  Attempts are made to convince the viewer that these are actual events, with authentic footage.  This is not unheard of with horror films; the 'based on a true story' claim has been around since at least "The Amityville Horror" and "The Texas Chainsaw massacre, with the "found footage" technique becoming prominent with "The Evil Dead" and "The Blair Witch Project".

However, it's difficult to establish suspension of disbelief here, because it's apparent that the film's creators only have a cursory understanding of modern psychology and psychotherapy.

To wit:

#1: People under hypnosis don't move around very much. Violent movements will bring a person out of a hypnotic state.  Hypnosis is a form of mental relaxation, inconsistent with physical activity.

#2: Hypnosis does not enhance memory; but hypnosis does encourage confabulation.

#3: If reports of waking up and seeing an owl occurs repeatedly, the response is to ask the patient to keep a pad of paper and pen to record their observations during bouts of insomnia, not hypnotize them the next day and ask them what they remember.

#4: Hypnosis is an altered mental state brought about by relaxation and calm.  Hypnotized people, even ones recalling traumatic events, typically do not experience significant levels of anxiety.  This is part of how hypnosis can be used in the treatment of phobias and other anxiety disorders.

#5: Hypnotised people do not typically experience physiological transients like retching or gargling. If you wouldn't do it dreaming or daydreaming, you won't do it under hypnosis.  A hypnotised person may choke, retch, burp, etc. as a response to a physical stimulus occuring in their physical body, unrelated to hypnosis, but that is not what is being depicted here.

#6: The main character initially positions herself as a psychologist engaged on a research project. Fun fact: despite what "Bones" tells you, psychologists are in fact scientists. Psychology is the science and study of behavior. Behavior that is observed, measurable, quantifiable. As a science, psychology operates on an empirical basis of fact. There is really no need for to psychologists to keep telling each other to focus on the facts. That's like MDs telling each other to focus on the symptoms.

#7: It's implausible for hypnotized patients to contort themselves severely enough to damage themselves.  It may be physiologically possible, under exposure to significant stress and adrenaline or in the course of a seizure, to contract a muscle group powerfully enough to cause damage to the underlying connective tissue, but such a state is incompatible with a hypnotic one (well, I suppose it would be possible for someone with a seizure disorder to experience one while in a hypnotic state, but that would be a readily identifiable medical phenomenon).

#8: Speaking languages one does not know, levitating, and electronic disruption of recording devices are unlikely to happen during clinical hypnosis.

#9: Unrelated to psychology, the depiction of Sumerian language and culture is off.  In a very narrow sense, Sumerian is "the oldest historical language", but only if one accepts that the defenition of "historical" includes "written down".  Sumerian is indeed the oldest known written language, but is not the oldest language of h. sapiens sapiens.  It is curious in that it is unrelated linguistically to any other known languages, but that is usually explained by the prevalence and dominance of the Semetic tongues in the area after the fall of the Sumerian culture.  Sumerian is not the "holy grail" of dead languages, except perhaps to historical linguists and historians focusing on the Near East.  Other researchers might be more interested in proto-Indo-European, proto-Dravidian, Mayan, or Minoan.

Of course, midway through the movie, the story comes completely off the rails...  some how hypnosis summons the ultras(1), who then can communicate with or through the hypnotised patient in real time.  The ultras here are inconsistent in their behavior - sometimes they float people through the roof (tidily repairing the damage behind them), other times they open doors and walk in.  They apparently can communicate telepathically, but also speak out loud for the benefit of everyone in the room.  The ultras here speak Sumerian, a language that a backwater psychologist in Nome, Alaska can somehow identify.  While adding Sumerian is a nice touch, implying that the ultras have been visiting us for a while (and Sumerian mythology has some interesting star god aspects to it), there's little reason to expect any given group of ultras to speak a human language.  It's also odd that the ultras speak a human language unchanged after 6,000 years, this is contrary to all theories of language change.  Also, why would telepathic ultras speak a dead language to humans who can't understand it?  Why not modern English?

Ultimately, the movie reveals itself to be entirely a work of fiction.
...
(1) We here at Et In Arcadia Ego prefer to follow John Keel and use the term ultra-terrestrial when describing a certain class of phenomena., and any putative non-human participants therein.  Doing so tends to highlight certain commonalities regarding events recorded in many different places and times.  Ultra-terrestrial events tend to occur at night, in sparesly inhabited areas.

Experiencers tend to be in or approaching an altered state of consciousness, usually one related to relaxation: sleep, highway hypnosis, flying at night over nondescript terrain, or engaged in a mindless repetitive activity (repetition relaxation).  Frequently physical exertion is at a minimum (engaging the relation between physical immobility and mental relaxation).


From a distance, the manifest themselves as lights, less often as sounds.  Movement through the sky is not uncommon, but such movement is distinctly non-newtonian.  It defys normal intuitions regarding inertia or gravity.  Circular swirling is not uncommon.

Upon entering the circumfrance of the phenomenon, a number of psychological effects occur.  There is a distortion of the perception of the passage of time.  Often, some form of paralysis or partial paralysis occurs (the known phenomenon of sleep paralysis is similar).  Auditory, visual, and olfactory hallucinations may occur.  Kinesthetic and balance may be affected, contributing to a feeling of flying, floating, or falling.  Anxiety ensues, which may be induced by the experience or as a reaction to it; this may lead to feelings of fear, terror, or paranoia.  Many experiencers report 'eerie' feelings, which may be the result of feeling anxiety with no readily identifiable cause.

Interestingly, the visual and auditory hallucinations experienced are resonant with the internal imagery of the experiencer.  Freudian or Jungian imagery predominates in accordance with the cultural and emotional worldview of the experiencer: 20th century Americans tend to report 'encounters with extra-terrestrials', while Christians might recount meeting devils or angels.  Prechristian peoples may have myths about the 'little people', the 'Elfreich'*, 'will'o'wisps' and similar.  Often, the anxieties of the experiencer will become manifest: psycho-sexual encounters and so on.  Barney Hill for instance reported his abductors as grey aliens wearing Nazi uniforms, something not unlikely to occur in the unconscious mind of a black man married to a white woman in the post WWII U.S. South.

Using the term ultra-terrestrial allows the recognition of the similarities of a number of cases, from faerie abductions in the British Isles, to witches Sabbats in colonial New England, to Incubi/Succubi events of Medieval Christendom.

* Origin of the English term 'eldritch'.

-------

Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org

An Open Letter...

...to the man who wanted me to teach him how to defend himself.

Everything I said to you was true. There is little I could teach you in two hours at a nightclub that would adequetly prepare you for your situation. I don't know the four fingered palm walking death punch. In a professional career, there has never once been a manuver or technique that worked out like I had planned it. Nothing works as it is taught in a dojo or gym. If I had tried to teach you an armlock or a kick or proper knee technique, it would likely not have had the result you wanted.

I told you that your best defense was probably to walk away. Keep fifteen feet between you and your opponent, and you'll probably be all right. The goal of a fight, as I told, you, is to endevour to ensure that your opponent cannot hurt you. If he cannot come close to you, you will have won. Or, as Abraham Lincoln is reported as having have said, “I should prefer to defeat my enemy by making him my friend.” Use that. Talk your way out of it. Find a compromise that you can both live with. Is whatever triggered the fight worth shedding blood over? Is it worth dying over? Is it worth killing over?

If it is, then you are in a much darker place. I asked you how commited you were to this; you told me that you were, that you'd do anything. Are you willing to go that far? Are you willing to decide that a fight is inevitable, and so to win at all costs? Would you strike first? From behind? With a weapon? Are you willing to set aside all concept of 'fair play' to get what you want? Can you set aside human restraint? Could you take the eye? Could you stand to feel bone shatter beneath your hands? Could you rip out another thinking being's jugular? With your teeth, if you must? Are you so driven by your demons that your only desire becomes to rip out a man's liver so he can watch you eat it before he dies?

I offered to refer you to some of the local schools that I think well of, but you told me you didn't want to live like a monk. All of the best fighters I know and have known do. Fighting is no simple matter, nowhere near as simple as it looks. To be ready to fight at a moment's notice means commiting your life, your mind, and your soul to it. Combat is the ultimate game, the ultimate contest. Strength, speed , coordination, endurance, stamina, toughness, balance, finesse, you will need all of these. You can't afford to sacrifice any, and you will have to strive to improve them all as much as you can find within you to do. You'll have to become a person who welcomes exercising in 90 degree heat, someone willing to do leg exercises until you feel like you can't stand up. You have to be willing to work through fatigue, through pain, and through injury.

Once you are here, you can begin to learn to fight. You can learn techniques and manuevers, not with an eye to executing them well, but to understanding how they're supposed to work. From here, you may begin integrating an understanding of how your body moves, and what you can do with it. Many things will begin to make sense: “When the enemy expands, I contract. When the enemy contracts I expand.” At that point perhaps I can teach you what little I know; how to move in straight lines to reach your goals, how to push opposition out of your way, I liken fighting to playing chess: develop your weapons, use them to take apart your opponent. Flow around opposition, turn your defense into an attack and your attack into defense. Drive at your enemy before he believes it's possible.

To the extent that you dedicate yourself to learning to fight, you will be darkening your soul. “He who strives with monsters must take care not to become a monster; know that when you gaze into the abyss, it also gazes into you.” Are you ready for that? Be prepared to lose everything you hold dear on one bad night. You must be willing to let go. One who fights to keep something is vulnerable; attachment becomes a weakness. Your destiny will be to end up a red smear across a stretch of pavement somewhere; you will have to content yourself with the question, “did I die well?” Your blood, your life must be meaningless to you; your question is “how many of the bastards can I take with me.” Your concern will not be to live through the night, it must be “will what I hold dearer than myself be safe?” Choosing this path will not take you to Heaven, but your consolation in Hell must be that you gave your all for what you believed in; that, because of you, others may in their own time reach a Heaven of their own.

There are dogs who grow up to be constant companions, loving and friendly. Then there are dogs trained to rip the throat out of anyone making a false move. Short of a very undeerstanding show of friendship and faith, the latter are put down if they live past their prime. The choice before you is the same one Achilles made: a long life in comfort and obscurity, or a quick death on the fields of Illium. The choice is yours. Do you still want me to try to teach you to fight?

-------

A relevant quote:

Somewhere out there is someone who had loving parents, watched clouds on a summer's day, fell in love, lost a friend, is kind to small animals, and knows how to say "please" and "thank you," and yet somehow the two of you are going to end up in a dirty little room with one knife between you and you are going to have to kill that human being.

It's a terrible thing.  Not just because he's come to the same realization and wants to survive just as much as you do, meaning he's going to try to puncture your internal organs to set off a cascading trauma effect that ends with you voiding your bowels, dying alone and removed from everything you've ever loved.  No, it's a terrible thing because somewhere along the way you could have made a different choice.  You could have avoided that knife, that room, and maybe even found some kind of common ground between the two of you.  Or at least, you might have divvied up some territory and left each other alone.  That would have been a lot smarter, wouldn't it?  Even dogs are smart enough to do that. Now you're staring into the eyes of a fellow human and in a couple of minutes one of you is going to be vomiting blood to the rhythm of a fading heartbeat.  The survivor is going to remember this night for the rest of his life.

Can you do that?  Do you want to do that? Don't mistake suicidal ideation for courage, or a frustrated sense of purpose for commitment.

----
Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org

The Amanda Morgan Principle

Drawn from Dickson's "Lost Dorsai":

"In fact, there isn't any such thing as a solution that could be made in time, isn't that right?"

"No, absolutely wrong.  If we could stop the clock at exactly this second and take some months to study the situation, we'd undoubtedly find not one, but several solutions that would abort the attack of the regemints in the time we've got to work with.  What you lack isn't time in which to act, since that's merely something specified for the solution.  What you lack is time in which to discover the solution that will work in the time there is to act."

-------

Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org

Everything I Needed to Know in Life...

... I learned from cyberpunk fiction:

1) Information once introduced to a database or network is never removed.

2) When people have a world of information at their fingertips, one can hide signal among the noise. If they never look for you, they won't find you.

3) Encrypt everything.

4) Make sure you're sharing only what you mean to share.

5) View all digital connections with distrust.

6) Become comfortable with alternate identities, anonymity, and cash.

7) Communities are distributed.

8) The future is portable.  Geography matters less.

9) Identity is fluid and malleable.

10) Concepts like beauty, history, truth, and morality are community derived, not monolithic or ahistoric.

11) One will have to adapt to changing technology, and adapt changing technology.

12) People must be self-governing.

-------

Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org

The Ongoing Nym Wars.

http://boingboing.net/2011/08/22/dispatch-from-the-nymwars-pseudonyms-and-science.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29

A decent article, but missing some points, I think.

For one, the ability to publish anonymously is tremendously important for scientists. I know, I know, science is supposed to be an open process, where due credit is claimed and given, where if one believes in one's research, one should be glad to put one's name on it. But there remains to problems: money and ideology.

In science, it is important to go wherever the results lead. One does not publish results that are wrong, nor withhold them because they are unwanted. However, if one is doing work in highly contested fields, like climate change, or environmental chemistry, or drug biochemistry, there is tremendous pressure to come up with the right results: those that the powers that be would like to see. In such cases, the availability of anonymity is crucial. Sometimes, only through anonymity can one publish results that go against the current conceptual grain without fear of reprisal.

But what about accreditation? Surely, one's results don't mean anything unless one can prove one's background, education, degrees, and credibility, right? Astonishingly, no. A well written scientific paper will describe the experimental set up in excrutiating detail. Every step, from experiment construction, insturmentation and apparatus, gathering of data, analysis, and presentation ought to be detailed and explained. At that point, it really shouldn't matter so much if one holds multiple Ivy doctorates or just a lazy day in the back yard. Results are results, and any critique with the experimental or observational set up can happen on that basis.
...
It is not just scientists who benefit from access to anonymity, either. There are those of us whose professional and personal lives are somewhat distinct. When I am at work, I attempt to behave in a calm, professional manner. I keep my opinions reserved to myself, especially where they may be at odds with those of my superiors, clients, and customers. But, being human, and Irish, and a philosopher by habit, I do have opinions. Sometimes I am driven to express them, but it would be infeasible for me to do so in a forum where they can be traced and attached to my professional persona.

On a regular basis these days, we are cautioned about not posting anything to a social media site that we might be embarrassed about later. And this is of course, true. But judicious use of anonymity allows for a certain amount of discretion to be exercised. Avoiding publication of photos, or unique identifying information allows a certain separation that is invaluable in the modern world.

Curse Google+ then, for their insistence on "real names" for their profiles. As if their machinery and machinations were capable of deciding on what is a real name at what is not. There are those individuals, some bearing a nom de electronique years in the making, that are forgoing participation in avoidance of being "outed".*
...
There is a certain arrogance in learning a person's name; a forced intimacy. We assumke that knowing a person, knowing their position in life, their state and status is the same as knowing their inner life. Yet the two are not always connected. Readers of Et In Arcadia Ego know much more about me than they might learn from my given name. Really, knowing my official persona is a masquerade of intimacy. Those who stumble upon me here, or at my new social networking account, or on any of the various online fora I frequent would do better to read my words and ponder them than to ask what my "real name" is. Even better, let's engage in a conversation, and we'll know each other better than a number of given names could say.
...
At a deeper level, pseudonyms are an inherent human need. We adopt various personae to mediate our interactions with the world. We choose, from moment to moment, which persona is to be shared with which others. For many, there are certain aspects of personality, or history, or intellectual life that are not to be shared with all comers. We pick and choose which to conceal and which to reveal, and it is not for any to force an unwelcome intimacy.

Each of us is unfathomable, we contain multitudes. The masks we choose to wear, and the roles we choose to play are how we converse with the world. To attempt to know someone by penetrating their persona is unthinkable, like attempting to know the entire night sky all at once.


*Incidentally, I recommend a revolt. Rather than allowing google+ to delete our profiles, I nominate that all of us unwilling to give up our anonymity adopt the pseudonym "Nicholas Bourbaki".

-------

Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org

Thus Uzzah spoke

Uzzah spoke, saying, "Ask not a philosopher any question, for he shall respond simply, saying ' I don't know. Maybe? It's complicated. What did you mean by that?' "
...
"To recognize untruth as a condition of life -- that certainly [or certainty?] means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil."

Not just beyond good and evil, my friend Zarathustra. Behind good and evil, as the best love of Aristotle was behind the physics.
...
If life becomes uncertain and full of doubt, where then do we place science? If even scientific truth is simply a mask for doubt, what then? Science becomes untethered, free to float upon the currents. But the wind that drives it is our invisible friend, philosophy.

"Philosophy makes science its bitch."

-------

Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org

A Really Bad Idea

For years, we've had various psuedo-reformers making a lot of noise about getting the corruption out of Washington, D.C. A lot of the focus has been on somehow getting into the system with a wire brush and scrubbing all of the money out. Unfortunately, the late Citizens United case has made that difficult, ruling as it did that corporate donors are permitted to give unlimited funds to influence campaigns.

We say we want campaigns to be about issues, not money. We say that political donations are akin to bribery and influence peddling. We try to outlaw quid pro quo arrangements, forbid mixing a candidate's personal and campaign funds. We limit the contributions that can be made to candidates, but allow "issue ads" to be funded, as if there were some sort of difference. It's said that a member of the U.S. house of representatives must raise $10,000 per week just to run for re-election. Money in politics is like water on the sidewalk, it always finds a way in.

Meanwhile, the primary process is gearing up for the 2012 coronation. President Obama is unchallenged on the Democratic side, but right now, there are twelve or twenty G.O.P. candidates each trying t get some sort of edge. As I write this, we're just out of the grand, meaningless Iowa straw poll, but any actual meaningful electoral activities are still months away.

The media, not having much to report on, is indulging itself in polls and statistics. We're told, week by week, day by day, sometimes hour by hour what representative samples of the populace think about the candidates. Pundits try to capture vague metrics for concepts like "support" and "momentum". And one of the metrics they like to track is money: who has raised how much how fast.

It's an important measure of political support. People like what a candidate is saying, so they send money. Big donors want stuff, so they back the candidate who best promises to give it to them. "If you can't drink their booze, take their money, and then vote against them, you don't belong in politics." they say. The money is important: money is speech, we're told. The money pays for ads, and appearances, and hotel rooms and airplanes and everything the candidate needs to get elected. The more money a candidate has raised, the more people like him.

Meanwhile, everyone complains about taxes. No matter what bracket you're in, taxes are too high. Or they're not high enough for somebody else. The government spends more than it takes in, and is drowning in red ink. One of the most divisive issues is the nature of government itself. How big should it be? Can we reduce the size of it by starving off the funding? Everyone seems to agree that deficits are a bad thing, but no one seems to know how to deal with them. Many people want smaller government, as long as their particular sacred cows aren't gored. "Get your government hands off my medicare!" or "If we cut defense and homeland security, terrorists will kill us all!"

So here's a really bad idea. Instead of trying to get money out of politics, let's let it all in. Instead of scrounging in budgets and tax plans for money, let's go to where the money already is. Let's merge the government budget process with the campaign finance process. Let's let candidates solicit unlimited money from anyone they want: people, corporations, unions, foreign nationals, other governments, anybody. But that's it. No taxes, no other revenue. What money a candidate has in the war chest at the end of the election cycle goes into the general fund.

The more a candidate spends on getting elected, the less he'll have available for kickbacks at the end of the cycle. No more contributing money to the guy who will cut your taxes or forge loopholes for you, because it'll be the same thing. Spend your money on the guy who will use it the way you want, not on the guy who will cut you the biggest deal once he's in office. The more popular a candidate is, the more money he'll get to play with to implement his policies. We'll all finally get the government we pay for.

How about it?

-------

Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org