Ring of clouds appear over Mexico and Russia [VIDS[

A flying saucer of course!!!

 

honestly what difference does it make? Live your 9-5, provide for your family, do well for others and die happy and successful.

Aliens, Atlantis, Government testing, all that other crap doesnt matter in the long run...get over it.

 

Toycen, just give up man.

http://www.meteorologynews.com/2009/10/12/hole-punch-cloud-not-ufo-spotted-over-moscow/

 

I like how you avoided answering half of the questions posed to you in the WTC thread. I hope you are enjoying watching life as it passes you by.

 

Didn't you say you have kids, ToyCen?

Do you feed them this crap?

Yes, it is full-blown crap.

 

Weather ballon, next.

 

So, I’ve actually come full circle to looking into a supernatural thinking and a magical thinking, which had interested me initially all those years ago. I came back to it again after years of studying experimentally about how children come to think about the world, and put together this theory that, although children may learn to be more rational as they become adults, their earlier notions never entirely go away. That’s really the crux of the SuperSense that I talk about in the book.

Dr. Campbell: What is the SuperSense?

Dr. Hood: Well, it’s a term I coined just to kind of capture what is a really broad phenomenon. It’s this idea that there is a hidden structure to the universe—that we have hidden powers; that there’s hidden organization; that there are patterns; that there are elements which we can’t necessarily directly see, but we feel that there’s something in addition to reality, as it were. It’s this sense, that there’s something in addition to reality, I call the SuperSense. And it can manifest in all manner of ways. It might be rituals that people engage in. It might be the notion that there are certain significant patterns out there that other people can’t see, but those who feel that they’ve got some special connection can detect. It’s the idea that there’s a life energy; there’s a force that can be tapped into. These are kind of vague conceptual ideas that you find in all cultures, but they’re all underpinned by the idea that there is this hidden dimension, this extra complexity to the world that science, as yet, has failed to discover, and yet most people feel it’s there.

Dr. Campbell: Would it be fair to say that an important theme of your book is
that these supernatural beliefs—or SuperSense—are a result of our natural ways of thinking?

Dr. Hood: Yes, that’s the contribution I’ve really made to the field. I mean the
idea that children have misconceptions and have magical thinking is something which was recognized decades ago. That’s something where, quite often, every parent can hear their child engaging sort of in strange notions. But what I’ve added to the debate is the idea that this is actually a natural consequence of the way that children reason.
For example, research over the past 20 years shows that children think about the world in terms of what we call ‘domains.’ So, they think about there being physical properties of the world; they have physical reasoning, if you like. They think about the properties of objects and how objects should behave. From a very early age they think about there being a difference between objects and living things. So, they know that if something gets up and moves by itself, it’s likely to be alive. They have a kind of intuitive, or naïve biology. And once they understand something is alive, they also attribute it a property of having a mental life; so, they see purpose and intentions.

Dr. Campbell: And most of these tendencies that you talk about in your book
are not really tendencies that ever go away.

Dr. Hood: Yes. That’s the other, I suppose, unique aspect about it. Because
you would imagine that, with education and scientific education, you should be able to abandon these ideas. I’ve been intrigued by the possibility that, in fact, you never really abandon any idea. You can suppress these ideas, and you can replace them, if you like, with more advanced ideas, but the original notions never truly go away.
And I think this is actually plausible biologically, in the sense that the central
nervous system has representations that never really entirely go away. I think the best example comes from the reflexes. We know, for example, that there’s a whole repertoire of reflexes we have that we’re born with as infants. And, with development and maturation of the right parts of the nervous system, you can suppress them. But they can reappear again. For example, in patient’s who are comatose, you might see the reemergence of very infantile reflexes.
And I think there’s no difference between that and the ideas that we form in
terms of concepts. I think that these can be suppressed and replaced by more advanced ideas of thinking, but nevertheless, they do remain there. And we know this experimentally, because you can get infantile ways of thinking, if you like, or childish notions reappearing in adults if you put them under the right circumstances. Typically in a stressful situation, for example, you might get a misconception reappearing. Or, indeed, in the very elderly who have compromised mental abilities, they can often show examples of childhood misconceptions reemerging again.
So, I suppose what I’m saying is that we develop into adults, and we learn, and we can get all sorts of information through education, but our natural way of thinking—what I call our intuitive thinking—never entirely goes away. And that is something which can form the basis for magical thinking, or adult supernatural beliefs.

Dr. Campbell: I’d like to explore your use of the words ‘intuitive thinking’ for a
minute, because obviously there has been a lot written on this by other people in the last few years. And their use of the word ‘intuition’ has tended to be a little bit broader than the way you use it in your book. In your book you use it to only refer to the way we think without being taught?

Dr. Hood: Yes, that’s right. It has some overlap with the way that other people use it. Very often it’s thought to be a gut reaction. And I think there’s something to that, but I use the term ‘intuitive’ as ‘untutored’—‘unlearned.’ In many instances it’s an unconscious process. We don’t have to be told how to do it, we just simply do it, and that’s the intuition that we operate with. Intuitions can tap into emotions, so you can have instances where you feel the correct response, but logically you’re working it out in a different way. So, that would be a conflict between your intuition and your rationality.

Psychologists have shown that, in fact, we operate with both systems. We have a very rapid intuitive system, which is very fast and furious—as I say, it
automatically kicks in. And there’s a second system, which is the rational system, which is more laborious, and much slower. It works on logic. It works on evaluating circumstances. And people vary in the extent to which they use one or the other; and that will depend upon the circumstances.

For example, Marjaana Lindeman in Finland, has shown that if you look at large samples of people, and you assess their reasoning in terms of their intuitive reasoning vs. their rationality, those who score very high on intuitive reasoning—in the sense that they rely very much on it—are those who also score much more highly on measures of supernatural thinking and belief in the paranormal. So, I think that this inclination towards one of the ways of thinking is also a bias towards susceptibility to the possibility of their being something supernatural in the world.

Dr. Campbell: But we really still need both types of thinking, right?

Dr. Hood: Oh, yes, absolutely. And in fact, if you read some of the biographies of some of the greatest scientists, very often the insights that they’ve had reflect intuitive processes. And that’s because when you’ve become an expert in a field, you’re not always consciously aware of all the really important information which helps you make decisions. And those intuitive processes—they’re always looking for patterns and structure—they can sometimes throw up combinations that you wouldn’t necessarily have discovered through a kind of logical process.

Dr. Campbell: The key, I guess, would be then taking that intuition and
comparing it to what we know with our reasoning. For example, if we see Jesus in a piece of toast, that’s not really a productive output of our intuition, is it?

Dr. Hood: Exactly. We can all have these occurrences, and weird experiences.
And the difference between the believer and the non-believer, I think, is the
extent to which the non-believers can just simply suppress it or ignore it, whereas people who are inclined to see this as being very auspicious will put a lot of significance on these natural patterns. And the world is full of these coincidences and patterns—it’s how you interpret them that defines whether you become the believer or not.

Dr. Campbell: You said in your book that most people give as their primary
reason for their supernatural beliefs, their personal experience. Could you talk a little bit about that—maybe use that example of thinking that we can tell people are looking at us—of how our experience can mislead us in that regard?

Dr. Hood: Yes. The brain that is designed to see structure and pattern; and
that includes evaluating the efficacy of our actions on the world. So, for example, this explains the emergence of superstitious rituals in people’s behavior. If, for example, you have a particularly good day on the tennis court, you try to repeat what you did on that day in order to recapture what gave you the advantage. You try to repeat your rituals, or you try to repeat the regime that you went through. It might be something like you wore a different pair of socks that day, or maybe you used a particular racquet, or maybe you ate something special that day. People will generally try to repeat the circumstances which have been associated with a successful outcome. And this becomes a self-fulling prophecy, so that, very simply, after a couple examples of good luck or positive outcome, people can engage in very surprising complex superstitious rituals. And this is something that the association theorist, B.F. Skinner, demonstrated with pigeons. He
showed that if you just simply randomly throw out reinforcements every so often, even simple birds will engage in very bizarre and ritualistic behavior, because the mind of even a bird tries to figure out the patterns and structures which lead to success. So, what we do is that when we notice events in the world that seem to have some order or causality, as we say, we think that there is some kind of mechanism creating it, and we can influence it. That’s why people have their pre-game rituals before events which they can’t control. And I should point out this is really all to
do with events in our lives where there is some important outcome. And when you haven’t got a lot of control over that outcome, you engage in behaviors which you think might have some influence.

That’s why rituals and superstitions are associated with important events, like
taking an exam. And you also find them in professions which have potential for
life-threatening events: anyone who is a deep-sea fisherman, or firefighters, or
any occupation where there’s a potential for harm, you find a preponderance of
these rituals—which are all really an attempt to control the uncontrollable.
Dr. Campbell: And then there’s the confirmation bias—the fact that we
remember when things fit what we believe. I’m an emergency room doctor, and everybody I know that works in the emergency room firmly believes that full moons bring out crazy people. And I intuitively believe that, even though I know it’s not true.

Dr. Hood: That’s right. As soon as you have a notion in your head, you tend to look for confirmatory evidence. That’s called the ‘confirmation bias,’ as you say. And so, you remember every example which confirms that, and conveniently ignore every counterexample. That’s why men think women are bad drivers— because they have this stereotype and they remember every example—when, in fact, statistically women are much safer drivers than men.

.....
Dr. Hood: Yes, exactly that. And that’s what I think is one of the big differences between people who succumb to their beliefs and those who are much more controlled. I think that those who are more controlled in their thinking actually have to actively suppress these ideas, and that when they’re put in situations where that ability to control their thoughts is compromised—such as a stressful situation—then they can’t readily do it. And then you get this reemergence of these intuitions driving their behavior and thoughts.

Dr. Campbell: Like praying in foxholes?

Dr. Hood: Exactly. Or when the plane plummets at 30,000 feet, everyone
suddenly becomes very religious.

http://docartemis.com/blog/2010/01/podcast34-hood/
http://astore.amazon.com/gingercampbel-20/detail/0061452645

 

The first parts of each video are very applicable.

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FFS, they're clouds.

 

Screw aliens...where the **** is bigfoot?!

 

So I clicked the link and the pics of moscow look way different than the other ones. This is some creepy stuff. UFOs? Maybe not. But I cant help but marvel at the beauty of our world and how little we know about it. Great post just for the simple fact that i have never known about these kind of clouds. They look awesome

 

I'm pretty sure you can "provide for your family" and still ask outlandish questions about aliens. I really can't wait for these cats to start homeschooling or trying to shape curriculum, right alongside the creationists. Fringe politics and culture are going to be jolly good fun, now that the Star Wars/X-Files generation is in charge.

 

I have a feeling that TC would never pose these questions in real life. I think this is an act - an "internet persona". He uses CF as an outlet for this outlandish crap as a means of gaining attention to himself, attention he never receives in his real world.


And with this, I have read my last TC thread.

 

I like these threads, they are fun.

DD

 

Your crap, my gold. Now go away. Really, you know damn well what was going on but you still had to come in here and share your crap. You're giving the rooks a bad example.

Thanks, ToyCen, interesting stuff.