Caveat: This book was chosen by my book club; otherwise I might not be the target audience for a book of this kind.
Given the subtitle, I was hoping fCaveat: This book was chosen by my book club; otherwise I might not be the target audience for a book of this kind.
Given the subtitle, I was hoping for some kind of meta-thesis about psychological phenomenon, and maybe some contextualization about the kinds of people and circumstances that are common in (as the author calls them) “experiencers�. That’s not what this is. That kind of phenomenology and critical thinking are basically absent.
Instead the book is largely a credulous recounting of a bunch of people’s experiences seeing things in the sky or in their dreams or recounting abductions by aliens they have allegedly experienced, often assisted by hypnosis. The author then wraps these stories in a thin onion-skin of questions about possibilities and what this must feel like, and that’s it. There is no further investigation or questions. He extensively uses an appeal to authority by recounting people’s job histories as proof of their stories. Another rationale offered as proof is that the people have “nothing to gain� by telling their stories or that he perceives them as very emotional or sincere.
The main tentpole of his credibility argument is that “the Pentagon has acknowledged UFOs�. He never mentions the roots of the government funded “UFO� studies and the people who ensured that the programs were funded; the connections to Skinwalker Ranch and oddballs like former musician Tom DeLonge. At the very least, I recommend that if you listen to Sprague’s podcast, you also add to your rotation Brian Dunning’s Skeptoid and Toby Ball’s Strange Arrivals to get other perspectives on the people and the phenomena.
If the goal of the book was to get me to believe, it has not offered anything new. If the goal is to get me to feel sympathy for these experiencers, that is important but doesn’t actually seem like the goal of the book. It is chapter 15 where he talks about getting people some kind of help that discredits this. He states he is looking for therapists that people can talk to but quickly dismisses most of the therapists he speaks to. He gives full credit to the practice of hypnosis; the practice science now blames for planting false memories and causing false accusations during the “Satanic Panic� of the 1980s.
The “U� in UFO and UAP is consistently interpreted to be not “unidentified� but instead unearthly and attributed to extraterrestrials, ignoring any other explanations. The author is not obligated to show “both sides� or all potential options. But if an author doesn’t offer or document the other possible explanations, I am likely to think they are biased. IIRC Sprague does a brief handwave towards “it could be something else� but ultimately, you get it, he is a believer. ...more
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