one of our most prominent and enduring
superstitions is the belief in UFOs
unidentified flying objects or
spacecraft from other planets now even
if you don’t believe in little green men
beliefs in UFOs may still tell us
something profound about how our minds
work pay attention I want you to listen
to the following three pieces of
information on July 18th 1954 an object
was seen in the sky above Wichita Kansas
and a local resident snapped this photo
of it
second on that same night the US Air
Force reported an unknown object that
had entered military airspace near
Wichita and also on July 18th
many residents near Wichita reported
strange weather lightning strong winds
and power outages all of which raises
the question what was the option above
Wichita that night put it had been a UFO
okay no there was no UFO over Wichita
that night and we weren’t really
expecting you to start believing in UFOs
that wasn’t really the point of what we
were trying to do is to trigger a
process in your brain a process that may
lie at the heart of many superstitions
let’s take a look at our three pieces of
information the photo the Air Force
report in the screen the weather the
photo on its own doesn’t seem so
compelling even in the days before
Photoshop it wasn’t too hard to fake
something like that in the Air Force
report well
unexplained blips on radar might not be
that too infrequent and the weather well
Wichita’s in the middle of Tornado Alley
after all but somehow when you put all
these facts together they start to seem
more compelling why here is the paradox
of coincidences on the one hand it’s
perfectly reasonable to doubt in them
since by definition they’re extremely
unlikely but on the other hand they’re
bound to occur all the time to somebody
somewhere and in today’s wired
globalized world we’re likely to hear
about strange coincidences when they
happen so think about it could it be
that our modern technology is actually
making us more superstitious
you
superstitions is the belief in UFOs
unidentified flying objects or
spacecraft from other planets now even
if you don’t believe in little green men
beliefs in UFOs may still tell us
something profound about how our minds
work pay attention I want you to listen
to the following three pieces of
information on July 18th 1954 an object
was seen in the sky above Wichita Kansas
and a local resident snapped this photo
of it
second on that same night the US Air
Force reported an unknown object that
had entered military airspace near
Wichita and also on July 18th
many residents near Wichita reported
strange weather lightning strong winds
and power outages all of which raises
the question what was the option above
Wichita that night put it had been a UFO
okay no there was no UFO over Wichita
that night and we weren’t really
expecting you to start believing in UFOs
that wasn’t really the point of what we
were trying to do is to trigger a
process in your brain a process that may
lie at the heart of many superstitions
let’s take a look at our three pieces of
information the photo the Air Force
report in the screen the weather the
photo on its own doesn’t seem so
compelling even in the days before
Photoshop it wasn’t too hard to fake
something like that in the Air Force
report well
unexplained blips on radar might not be
that too infrequent and the weather well
Wichita’s in the middle of Tornado Alley
after all but somehow when you put all
these facts together they start to seem
more compelling why here is the paradox
of coincidences on the one hand it’s
perfectly reasonable to doubt in them
since by definition they’re extremely
unlikely but on the other hand they’re
bound to occur all the time to somebody
somewhere and in today’s wired
globalized world we’re likely to hear
about strange coincidences when they
happen so think about it could it be
that our modern technology is actually
making us more superstitious
you
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