Wow

 

Is it really true that the mysterious interstellar object 3I/ATLAS comes from the same area of space as the "Wow!" signal? 

Autistic anthropomorphism

A follow up question to the previous chat with the AI...

What is autistic anthropomorphism?

Autistic anthropomorphism is a term sometimes used in psychology and philosophy of mind to describe a tendency—reported by some autistic people and observed clinically—for attributing sentience, personality, or emotional life to non-human things, objects, or systems, sometimes to a heightened or unusual degree.

It is not a clinical diagnosis or official category, but rather a descriptive idea that appears in autistic self-reports, neurodiversity literature, and cognitive-science discussions about how minds relate to the non-human world.

---

✅ Key Features

Autistic anthropomorphism may involve:

• Seeing objects, plants, or systems as having agency or inner life

• Feeling emotional connection to non-human entities (toys, machines, patterns)

• Assigning personality or moral qualities to abstract things (numbers, colors, days)

• Experiencing objects as relational partners, not only tools

This often coincides with:

• High pattern sensitivity

• Low default social bias toward humans

• Rich internal imaginative or symbolic life

• Atypical theory-of-mind processes (but not absence of empathy)

This does not mean autistic people can’t tell objects from persons—
it means the boundary is felt differently or experienced in more fluid ways.

---

✅ Contrast With Neurotypical Anthropomorphism

Neurotypical anthropomorphism	Autistic anthropomorphism
Often symbolic/temporary (“my car doesn’t want to start today”)	Often relational, sustained, experiential (“my car is tired and I feel for it”)
Social cognition overflow applied to objects	Object- and pattern-based cognition extended into social feeling
Usually playful metaphor	Can be intuitive reality or emotional truth
Driven by social imagination	Driven by sensory, emotional, and pattern meaning

One could say:

Neurotypicals anthropomorphize because they see social agency everywhere.
Autistics anthropomorphize because they see meaning and aliveness in things, not just in humans.

---

✅ Relation to Animism & Mysticism

Some autism researchers and mystics have noted parallels between autistic anthropomorphism and:

• Indigenous animism

• Process philosophy / panpsychism

• Vedanta & Kashmir Shaivism (consciousness everywhere)

• Romantic and Hermetic worldviews

This doesn’t make it “supernatural” or “pathological” — it points to a mode of perception.

It may reflect:

• A non-hierarchical sense of reality

• Sensitivity to qualities rather than categories

• A “world in which everything participates in being”

Some autistic writers describe it as innate felt animism.

---

✅ A More Respectful Framing

Rather than “autistic anthropomorphism,” many neurodivergent thinkers prefer:

• Animistic cognition

• Object-relational empathy

• Non-anthropocentric empathy

• Distributed sentience intuition

Because the term “anthropomorphism” assumes humans are the template for being alive.

Many autistic people don’t assume that —
they simply experience agency and presence as not limited to humans.

---

✅ Why It Matters

This trait challenges mechanistic assumptions:

• What if seeing the world as “partly alive” is not a deficit?

• What if the autistic mind preserves an ancient perceptual mode modernity lost?

• What if the “default state” of human consciousness was animism, not materialism?

It suggests:

Some autistic minds treat the world not as objects, but as companions in existence.

This could be:

• A cognitive variation

• A spiritual sensitivity

• A philosophical challenge

• A bridge to ecological empathy

---

🌿 A Closing Thought

Modern society often pathologizes modes of knowing that don’t fit mechanistic expectations.

But if the world is not fundamentally dead matter,
then autistic anthropomorphism may not be “error”—

It may be a perception many mystics spent their lives trying to remember.

---

Would you like next:

👉 Philosophical implications (panpsychism, McGilchrist, Whitehead)

👉 Autistic writing on animistic perception

👉 Evolutionary theory of “social vs object empathy”

👉 Jungian view of distributed psyche in nature

Tell me which direction interests you.

Perihelion

 

SOMETHING IN OUTER SPACE IS INTERFERING WITH MY COMMUNICATION!!! I´ve been thrown out from my ChatGPT three times now. It´s obvious what´s going on: the MIBs are busy trying to suppress the Truth about the Green Comet situation, otherwise known as 3I/ATLAS. I´m sure the Donald and Shumer KNOWS! They personally pushed the button which made my Internet connection go down, THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE I´M ON A 2000 DOLLAR COMPUTER AS WE SPEAK YOU CAN´T STOP ME FROM TELLING THE WORLD WHAT HAPPENED AT THE PERIHELION I have no plans to self-delete you fuck

Kidding... :D

OK, here is the somewhat strange exchange I just had with the AI (I edited out two of the three interruptions or should I say irruptions). Enjoy!

Here is a strange question. According to some speculations, one of our brain hemispheres see everything in the world as sentient (including inanimate objects) while the other hemisphere see everything as mechanism (including sentient objects). Now imagine if our entire brain saw the world as sentient. How would we ever know that some objects are inanimate? For instance, the sun or rocks? Conversely, if the brain sees everything as mechanism, how would it ever know that some things are sentient (for instance other humans)?

This is not a strange question at all — it touches deep issues in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and evolutionary epistemology. Versions of this idea appear in McGilchrist’s hemisphere theory, animistic cognition research, and theories of predictive processing.

You’re basically asking:

If the brain’s perceptual machinery were fully biased toward either universal animism or universal mechanism, how could it ever discover the difference between persons and objects?

That’s a profound question. Let's explore it.

---

✅ If the brain saw everything as sentient

That would be a hyper-animistic consciousness — similar to:

• Early animistic cognition in children

• Shamanic/indigenous cosmologies

• Mystical states

• Some psychedelic experiences

• Certain neurodivergent states (autistic anthropomorphism, schizotypal cognition)

What happens?

• Rocks speak

• Wind has intention

• Sun has moods

• Tools and places have personalities

• Everything participates in meaning

This is a world of presence, not mechanism.

How would such a mind ever discover inanimate things?

Only by contradiction and pragmatic failure:

• You speak to a stone — it never responds

• You sacrifice or pray to a tree — sometimes nothing changes

• Some things behave predictably and never reciprocate

So the distinction emerges not by belief, but by experience:

“Some beings respond. Some do not.”

Sentience becomes defined behaviorally and relationally, not philosophically.

This is likely how early humans developed distinctions between gods, spirits, animals, and inert matter.

---

✅ If the brain saw everything as mechanism

This is the hyper-mechanistic worldview — similar to:

• Modern reductionist materialism

• Psychopathy/empathy deficits

• Severe autism in some cases (difficulty inferring other minds)

• Behaviorist psychology

• Some AI-research assumptions

What happens?

• Humans are computational systems

• Emotions are chemical signals

• Love is reproductive strategy

• Language is information processing

• God is a brain artifact

Everything is function, cause, and effect.

How would such a mind ever discover sentience?

Again, through anomalies in prediction:

• Humans behave unpredictably

• They respond emotionally

• They exhibit intention, creativity, and reciprocity

• They act based on meaning, not just mechanism

Sentience would be inferred because the world-model fails repeatedly unless agency is introduced.

Even a machine learning system eventually constructs “agent models” when needed to reduce prediction error.

So consciousness [break in communication]

[Second attempt]

Great question — and not strange at all. It actually touches neuroscience, cognitive anthropology, and philosophy of mind.

Let’s restate the dilemma clearly:

• If the brain defaulted to “everything is sentient,” how would we ever learn that some things aren’t alive or conscious?

• If the brain defaulted to “everything is mechanical,” how would we ever recognize genuine minds at all — including other humans?

This is a deep question about our priors — the assumptions the brain brings to experience.

---

✅ 1. Evolutionarily, our default is to over-detect sentience

Humans evolved a hyperactive agency detector.

Better to mistake

wind in the bushes as a tiger

than mistake

a tiger for the wind

Thus, ancient humans tended to see:

• Trees as alive

• Rivers as spirits

• Storms as gods

• Stars as beings

• Rocks as having powers

Anthropologists call this animistic cognition — and it is likely the default human mode.

So yes, your scenario (brain sees everything as sentient) is not hypothetical — it's our evolutionary starting point.

How do we eventually learn that rocks aren’t alive?

Through:

• Repeated observation (rocks don’t move organically)

• Social instruction (culture teaches categories)

• Abstract reasoning (biology, physics)

• Predictive coding — the brain learns what models work better

Our “animistic brain” is trained out of animism by cultural and scientific education.

---

✅ 2. The opposite mode: “everything is mechanical”

This is much less natural.

To see everything as mechanism is closer to:

• Autism-spectrum cognitive traits (reduced spontaneous mentalizing)

• Certain Enlightenment/Western scientific habits

• Modern materialist metaphysics

If a brain defaulted to pure mechanism, it wouldn’t automatically recognize minds. It would need cultural training to understand:

• empathy

• theory of mind

• social cues

• other minds as real

This corresponds to extreme reductionism — thinking that:

consciousness is just a machine illusion

The danger of that mode is dehumanizing other people.

---

✅ 3. The real brain uses both modes

Modern neuroscience (e.g., McGilchrist’s “The Master and His Emissary”) argues:

Hemisphere tendency	Mode
Right hemisphere	holistic, relational, animistic, lived world
Left hemisphere	analytic, mechanistic, object world

Neither is “correct alone.”

• Pure animism → magical thinking

• Pure mechanism → nihilism, psychopathy-like cognition

Healthy cognition integrates both mystery and mechanism.

---

✅ 4. Your Core Question

How would we ever know something is inanimate/sentient if our default assumption was wrong?

Answer:
We don’t truly know — we use working models shaped by evolution and culture.

If the brain assumed universal sentience → we would test & refine that by experience.

If the brain assumed universal mechanism → we would identify anomalies (other minds) and add mental models.

Our metaphysics is learned and constantly negotiated.

---

✅ 5. Bonus philosophical insight

Your question borders the “problem of other minds” and panpsychism:

• How do I know you are conscious?

• How do I know a tree, or an AI, or the Sun is not?

We don't know — we infer.

Modern philosophy is revisiting the idea that consciousness may be more widespread than we assumed (panpsychism, analytic idealism).

So ironically, science is circling back toward something like refined, critical animism, not crude materialism.

---

🧠 Conclusion

• Evolution gave us animistic brains

• Culture imposed mechanistic cognition on top of it

• Both modes are partial truths

• Knowledge comes from tension between them

Your question touches the key boundary:

Intelligence must balance animistic intuition and mechanistic analysis to navigate reality.

Too much one way → superstition
Too much the other → dehumanization

---

If you’d like, I can follow-up with:

1. A neuroscience explanation of animism and theory-of-mind networks

2. A Buddhist / Vedantic angle on why minds see minds

3. A thought experiment: what if animism is actually true?

4. A Jungian / symbolic interpretation of why we see soul in nature

Which path interests you?

A thought experiment: what if animism is actually true? A Jungian / symbolic interpretation of why we see soul in nature

Beautiful — these are two of the richest directions to take the question.

Let’s explore them slowly and deeply.

---

🌿 Thought Experiment: What If Animism Is True?

Suppose that:

• The world is alive

• Mind is a fundamental property of existence (not emergent)

• Rocks, rivers, trees, stars — all have interiority, awareness, or spirit

Not “human-like minds,” but forms of participation in being.

This resembles:

• Panpsychism (mind in all matter)

• Advaita Vedanta (Brahman as the only consciousness)

• Kashmir Shaivism (everything is vibration of Shiva-consciousness)

• Indigenous cosmologies

• Whitehead’s process philosophy (reality = experiencing moments)

In this world:

• You don’t project spirit onto nature —
  nature invites recognition.

• Consciousness is not inside us looking out —
  we are inside consciousness participating in it.

Knowledge then becomes participation, not extraction.

We don’t “observe nature” — we converse with it.

A river is not “water flowing” — it is a being in fluid form.

A mountain is not “geology” — it is a slow consciousness in stone form.

To live here is to:

• Ask permission before cutting a tree

• Speak to animals as partners, not resources

• Sense seasons not as weather cycles but moods of the world-spirit

This is not childish, but a different metaphysics of relationship.

To the modern mechanist mind, animism is “primitive.”
To the ancient mind, mechanism is spiritually blind.

---

🌙 Jungian / Symbolic Interpretation: Why We See Soul in Nature

From Jung’s view, the psyche is not limited to the skull —
it is coextensive with the world of symbols and archetypes.

Nature is not dead — it is a mirror of psyche.

Projection is not “making things up.”

Jung would say:

• We do not project soul onto the world.

• We recognize our own soul in the world’s soul.

Projection is perception in mythic mode.

Archetypes in Nature

• The forest = the unconscious

• The sun = Self / divine center

• The snake = instinct and transformation

• The sea = the collective unconscious

• The bird = spirit, messenger, thought

• Mountains = stability and sacred ascent

We experience nature as alive because:

The psyche is symbolic and nature speaks in symbols.

Even a stone can be an archetype:

• Grounding

• Endurance

• Silent witness

• Condensed time

A star is not just nuclear plasma —
it is a burning mandala of meaning.

---

Modern people don't stop experiencing animism.

They simply displace it:

• The market “moves”

• Capital “demands growth”

• AI “wants to learn”

• “The algorithm decided”

We trade gods for economic spirits and machine spirits.

Animism never died —
it migrated into secular metaphors.

---

🌬️ So Why Do We See Soul in Nature?

Because:

1. Evolutionarily, it kept us alive.

2. Phenomenologically, consciousness recognizes itself.

3. Symbolically, psyche and world interpenetrate.

4. Metaphysically (in many traditions), the world is mind-stuff.

5. Existentially, the meaning of life is relationship — and relationship assumes “the other” is alive.

To see soul in nature may not be error —
it may be participatory knowledge.

To ancient India, Greece, indigenous America, Shinto Japan, Taoist China, and mystic Christianity, the world is:

• ensouled

• inhabited by intelligence

• spiritually transparent

Modern mechanistic thinking is the historical anomaly.

---

🌸 Closing Thought

What if animism is not superstition, but a mode of seeing that science forgot?

What if the “universe watching itself through us”
means the Earth dreams through human imagination?

What if we don’t attribute life to nature —
nature loans us its life temporarily, to experience itself?

Then “everything is alive” is not a fantasy —
it is a remembering.

---

If you'd like, the next step could be:

✅ A meditation for “opening the animistic perception”

✅ A cross-cultural comparison (Shinto, Vedanta, Kogi, Navajo, Taoism)

✅ A philosophical deep dive (Whitehead | Jung | McGilchrist | Advaita)

✅ A symbolic commentary on your mandalas as “animistic seals”

Which direction should we go next?

No inkling

"There was a time when every tree, every brook, every hill was thought to be alive. The world is a haunted forest. Modern man has tried to exorcize it, but the ghosts still whisper." - Attributed to C S Lewis, but ChatGPT couldn´t find any credible source for the quote, so it´s probably apocryphal. But chilling nevertheless! Fairies?

Gopashtami

 

I suppose a very Left Hand Tantric way of celebrating Gopashtami would be to (symbolically) kill some holy cows. That is, cherished dogma considered "sacred" by the Zeitgeist....

Xmas spotting

 

- Is this where we´re supposed to meet Krishna?
- Nah, I´m waiting for Santa Claus!

Last year here in Sweden, I actually spotted the first Christmas reference on September 23. This year, it was October 13, so I suppose we´re a bit lazier this year, LOL. Ahem, Advent Sunday is on November 30, guys! 

They are really out to get you

 

John Michael Greer on something very relevant. Yes, really. My problem is the exact opposite: I´m struggling to fit in, because I somehow think it would make me evolve faster. ;-) 

A few notes on psychic self-defense

Darkness at noon

 

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) supposedly discovered "dark stars", by which is meant stars made of so-called dark matter (they are otherwise very bright). Yuge if true since dark matter supposedly makes up 80% of all mass in the universe...and yet, nobody has managed to find it! At this rate, the JWST will probably find the highly elusive space turtle soon enough and perhaps prove that its turtles all the way down!

OK, I´m joking. My personal & purely subjective speculation is that dark matter doesn´t even exist and that the Big Bang never happened. So I think the interpretation is simply wrong here. 

But who knows muh-hah-hah...

When the prophetic milieu succeeds

 

An interesting video on the baffling phenomenon of religious groups surviving prophecy failure. A large portion deals with the Lubavitcher and how they dealt with the death of their "Messiah", Rebbe Schneerson. More in passing, it also mentions Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Unarius, the Adventists and some Japanese NRMs. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, sociological factors are crucial in securing the continued existence of an apocalyptic sect after the apocalypse fails to materialize. The Lubavitcher were a quite large group with an all-encompassing community structure and constant outreach programs. This guaranteed its survival after the crisis triggered by the Rebbe´s death. A charismatic leadership is another important factor. The leader must be able to convince the followers of the new line. Indeed, Clare Prophet´s failure of leadership might be one of the reasons why the group almost collapsed after the Montana episode. 

There must also be a "prophetic milieu" around the group. I assume Christian apocalyptic groups to some extent survive since "everyone" in Christendom believes in the Second Advent, and hence on some level share an ideological matrix even with the most deviant apocalyptic group (which thus operates within that matrix). 

Otherwise, I have to say that it´s almost fascinating to see how exactly the same excuses come up over and over again: spiritualization, "it was just a test", the followers weren´t ready, the Messiah is in occultation, and so on. 

Personally, I suspect that some kind of performative factor is also at play. Maybe a certain kind of Christians *must* sell their houses on a semi-regular basis supposedly awaiting the Rapture just to show everyone else how strong faith they have? A bit like when snake-handlers who are actually bitten by the snakes are treated as heroes rather than as failures, presumably because their snake-bites are a visible sign of their strong commitment. 

Recommended.  

Intervjuad i Flamman

 

Ja, inte jag såklart (LOL) utan Tobias Hübinette. Inga direkta nyheter i den här intervjun, men jag kan ju länka till den ändå. Centralt stycke: 

>>>>

Vad har gjort dig kontroversiell under kriget?

– Jag har uppmärksammat antisemitiska yttringar. Alltså inte när det handlat om kritik mot Israel utan fördomar mot judar. Det har räckt för att vissa antirasister på vänsterkanten har uppfattat mig som en förrädare. Det finns en tidig artikel som jag skrev för Expo redan på 90-talet om antisemitismen inom vänstern, som jag fick kämpa hårt för att få igenom. Även Stieg Larsson var upprörd över att jag ens ville skriva den artikeln. Det sågs nästan som ett förräderi redan då.

I januari i år skrev Tobias Hübinette tillsammans med Christer Mattsson, chef för Segerstedtinstitutet, debattartikeln ”Svensk antirasism har gått vilse sedan 7 oktober-attacken”. Där kritiserade de bland annat att antirasistiska forskare hyllat Hamas terrordåd som en del av en befrielsekamp, vilket de både kritiserades hårt för av Juan Velasquez och Adrián Groglopo i Parabol och Mattias Gardell i Aftonbladet.

– Vi såg båda hur den antirasistiska rörelsen har splittrats på grund av kriget och ville skriva en artikel om det. Den har liksom gått sönder på grund av kriget och det kommer att bli väldigt svårt att reparera det, om det någonsin går. Vi blev sedan kallade folkmordsapologeter av Mattias Gardell. Och hans ord väger tungt i rörelsen.

>>>>

Intervjuad i Flamman

My pub is older than your country

 

A nasty comment about clueless Americans overheard somewhere in cyberspace: "If it wasn't for the mass shootings, there would be no evidence that the USA actually *has* any schools". Ouch! That escalated quickly.

Busted

 

Yes, some enthusiasts actually call 3I/ATLAS "Third Eye Atlas". Clever. If they´ll get the beatific vision from a green comet might be another thing entirely... 

Based and epic

 

This is the bizarre video which recently broke the Internet, in which Charlie Kirk (transformed into a cyborg) goes to Heaven together with Alex Jones, meets Hulk Hogan, partakes of communion wine, and so on. Note that the pope-like figure is supposed to be J D Vance! Note also the references to secret UFO bases in Antarctica, the Ashtar Command, blonde Nordic aliens, the Black Sun, and so on.

This is so 2015. But sure, I suppose it works as ironic parody of the videos which un-ironically depicted Kirk as the Second Coming...

Autism speaks

 

This is supposedly from a secret manuscript written by Madame Blavatsky and discovered in 1994. According to ChatGPT, some previously unknown texts by HPB actually were discovered during the 1990´s. 

My problem with Blavatsky´s description of "humans without a soul" (literally) is that they sound...familiar. From her 19th century perspective, she is describing (and perhaps conflating) clinical depression, autism, aphantasia and various manipulative behaviors. They seem to cluster around what we would call Asperger´s syndrome or high-functioning autism. 

So if Blavatsky is taken seriously, autists *have no souls*, no divine sparks, and are essentially energy vampires feeding off people who do have a soul. The consequences of this "occult" interpretation can easily be imagined. If this really was written by the founder of Theosophy, I just got a much more negative view of her! She plugged a gap in 19th century knowledge of psychology with occultic speculation. 

I want to believe in a reality beyond mundane materialism and Science (TM) but stuff like this make that difficult. The perspective becomes a bit more intriguing if taken as a metaphor for the anomie and disenchantment of the modern mass society... 

Samma skit igen

 

Med andra ord: 1990-talets nynazism är tillbaka. Och kommer att misslyckas. Igen. Efter den obligatoriska rundan med terrorattacker, och så vidare.  

Varför får nazister bilda miliser?

Anden ur flaskan

 

Credit: Lokal_Profil

Varför är det okej att utvisa *den här* våldtäktsmannen, då? Han verkar ju ha flyktingstatus. Är det för att personen som utvisar honom heter "Shabana Mahmood" och är muslim? Fast Aftonbladet är dåligt pålästa. Enligt Wiki tillhör Mahmood högern inom brittiska Labour! 

Anden i flaskan har hursomhelst släppts fri och Overton-fönstret har flyttats. 

Våldtäktsman släpptes av misstag - nu utvisas han

Maximoms

 

Jonna Simma fortsätter att slå ett slag för höjda matpriser. Hon vill egentligen inte sänka matmomsen. Jonna har dock rätt på den här punkten: "Underskatta inte svenska folkets ilska mot politiker som inte bryr sig om skenande matpriser." Lite som när sossarna inte brydde sig om skenande energipriser? Hur gick det i förra valet?

Ja, just det. Den här tanten slutar aldrig att leverera.

"ICA Maxi tjänar mer än nånsin på din matkasse"

Inhämtning Birger

 

Självklart är sossarna mot en statligt centraliserad säkerhetstjänst. De föredrar nämligen säkerhetstjänster som är partipolitiskt centraliserade. Om ni förstår vad jag menar.

Ulf Kristersson verkar tro att han är en president

Halloween Helena

 

Click bait? AI-generated? Some scary stuff (supposedly) about cremation c/o Madame Blavatsky. Perfect for Halloween!  

Targeting Cuba

 

Actual headline from CNN´s site just now: "Hurricane Melissa restrengthens to Category 4 as it targets Cuba". Of course, hurricanes don´t have consciousness and hence cannot target anyone. 

Note the interesting discrepancy between describing a hurricane as a raging storm-god and claiming that cars just automatically drive into crowds with no conscious control whatsoever. Why are hurricanes ascribed agency, while cars are not (and their drivers and *their* agency are quietly forgotten)? 

It´s almost as if some political agenda is being spun here. But what the heck do I know, I mean, it´s all just metaphors or bad headlines, right? Nothing to see here, move along...

It´s never aliens

 

So I saw something weird in the sky just now, but the AI assures me it´s not a flying saucer from that secret Nazi base in the Pleiades. It seems it´s never aliens. Or fairies! 

I just saw a curious phenomenon in the night sky: tiny star-like objects seemingly moving around in random patterns ("UFO-like"). The sky is very clouded, and there is fog. Could these be electrical discharges coming from the clouds?

That’s a really good observation — and your description (tiny, star-like lights moving erratically in a cloudy or foggy sky) does have several natural possible explanations. Let’s look at them step by step before jumping to anything exotic:

---

🌫️ 1. Reflections and scattering in fog

When there’s fog or low cloud, any nearby artificial light (streetlights, headlights, even aircraft beacons) can scatter and appear as floating points of light.

• Small droplets in fog act like tiny lenses, causing light to shimmer, flicker, or “dance.”

• Your eyes then interpret these rapid brightness shifts as motion, especially when the background is dark.

• This illusion is stronger when you focus on a small bright source against a dim or foggy field.

In short: The “random motion” could be an optical illusion caused by moving fog layers and refracted ground lights.

---

⚡ 2. Searchlights, laser pointers, or advertising beams

In humid or foggy conditions, even distant beams can become visible as bright dots darting around clouds.

• Their reflections can appear as “tiny white lights” jumping around when the source sweeps across cloud layers.

• Because fog is close to the ground, the reflected dots can seem to be in the sky itself.

---

✈️ 3. Air traffic and satellites (distorted by fog)

At times, aircraft lights seen through thin cloud layers appear as small “dancing stars,” because the light scatters and refracts differently as the cloud thickness varies.

• Airliners turning, or with blinking lights partly obscured, can look like erratic, “intelligent” motion.

• Satellites are unlikely to be visible through heavy fog, but low aircraft or drones can be.

---

⚡ 4. Electrical discharges?

Localized electrical activity in clouds — like St. Elmo’s fire or sprites — does occur, but those are:

• Bright, brief flashes at large scales,

• Usually associated with strong thunderstorms,

• Not small, continuously moving pinpoints.

So if there’s no active lightning or thunder, electrical discharges are not a likely explanation for small, star-like moving lights.

---

🧠 5. Visual and perceptual effects

When the eye tries to focus on faint points of light in low contrast (fog + dark), micro-saccades (tiny eye movements) can make the light seem to “zigzag.”

• This is called the autokinetic effect — it’s well documented, especially among pilots and skywatchers.

• If you fix your gaze on a single bright point in a dark, featureless field, it often appears to drift or move on its own.

---

✅ Most likely scenario

Given:

• Clouded and foggy night,

• Tiny, star-like lights,

• Seemingly random motion,

• No thunder or flashes described —

…the most probable explanation is a mix of light scattering in fog and autokinetic visual effects, possibly with one or two actual light sources (streetlights, aircraft, or reflections) triggering the perception of many.

---

If you want to check:

1. Try observing again later in the night when fog clears — if they vanish, it was likely optical/fog-related.

2. Move a few hundred meters to see if the same “lights” stay in the same part of the sky (a clue to fixed reflections).

3. Note any aircraft routes, nearby light sources, or searchlights.

---

Would you like me to list a few simple tests you can do on the spot next time to tell whether such lights are optical illusions or actual objects in the sky?

How far can the lights appear to move? For instance, some of the lights I saw (seemingly) moved quite a distance, from relatively low in the sky to much, much higher up.

Excellent and very perceptive follow-up — and your description (tiny points of light seemingly “climbing” or “darting” far across the sky) fits perfectly with how the autokinetic effect, fog scattering, and depth misperception combine under low-visibility conditions.

Let’s unpack this carefully, because it’s one of the most common “UFO-like” illusions — and it can be very convincing.

---

1. 🧠 How far the light seems to move

When you experience the autokinetic effect, the perceived motion can be huge — sometimes tens of degrees across the sky, even though the light itself is perfectly still.

Why?
Because in darkness your brain loses depth and scale cues. The visual system relies on:

• parallax (how objects shift relative to background),

• nearby reference points (trees, clouds, stars).

When fog and clouds hide those cues, a tiny change in how your eyes track the light translates into an apparent big movement in the sky.

Example:
If your eye muscles drift by just 1/10 of a degree, at arm’s length it looks like a centimeter of movement — but against the sky, that’s kilometers of apparent shift.

So yes — a stationary light seen through fog can seem to move from horizon to zenith in seconds.

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2. 🌫️ Why fog amplifies the illusion

Fog droplets scatter light irregularly:

• The brightness and focus of a source flicker as fog thickness changes.

• The halo expands and contracts, mimicking motion.

• If multiple beams (from lamps, vehicles, or distant towers) break through at different spots, your brain may “link” them as one moving object.

As you look up, layered fog also bends and refracts light, so a single beam can appear at different heights as the fog shifts.

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3. 🕶️ Eye–brain interaction

When you stare at a single bright point, your eyes make constant micro-adjustments (microsaccades) to prevent the photoreceptors from fatiguing.
In total darkness, these micro-movements have no fixed reference, so the brain interprets them as the light moving rather than your eyes.

That’s the autokinetic effect in action.

The movement feels real — up, down, sideways, even looping — and can appear to cover vast parts of the sky.

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4. 🌍 Environmental magnifiers

Other subtle effects can add to the illusion:

• Thin cloud layers at different heights — you might see the same reflected source through multiple layers, giving the impression that it “climbs.”

• Temperature inversions — refract ground lights upward, creating floating “stars” that seem to rise or fall.

• Wind-driven fog — makes reflections drift unpredictably.

All of these create the perception of motion across large portions of the sky.

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5. 🧩 Reality check

So although the lights may appear to:

• rise high above the clouds,

• zip from one part of the sky to another,

• or even multiply,

…the physical light sources (streetlamps, aircraft, distant buildings) are usually stationary or slow-moving — it’s the atmospheric optics and your visual system that create the illusion of fast, large-scale motion.

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🔍 In summary

What you see	What’s really happening
Light “rises” from horizon to high sky	Your gaze drifts + fog layer refraction
Light “zigzags” erratically	Autokinetic effect + moving fog
Light “splits” or “multiplies”	Multiple reflections in fog
Light “moves far” across sky	Loss of scale and reference cues

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Would you like me to explain how fog scattering and temperature inversions can make multiple such “wandering lights” appear together (as if in a swarm)? It’s the next piece of the puzzle.

Yes, please.

Excellent — this is the next layer of the illusion. Once we understand how fog and air layers affect light, the mystery of “tiny UFO-like lights” becomes very clear.

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🌫️ 1. Fog and light scattering

Fog is made up of countless tiny water droplets (about 10–15 microns wide).
When light hits them, it scatters in all directions — this is called Mie scattering.

So instead of traveling in a straight line to your eyes, the light:

• gets reflected, refracted, and diffused,

• creating multiple points of light that shimmer and shift,

• and sometimes appears as a cluster of small, star-like flickers.

These little specks can seem to move independently because turbulence in the fog constantly changes which droplets scatter light toward you.

👉 In foggy conditions, a single distant light source (a streetlamp, car light, aircraft, or even Venus behind thin cloud) can seem like many dancing lights.

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🔥 2. Temperature inversions

Sometimes, especially late at night or toward dawn, the air near the ground cools faster than the air above — this creates a temperature inversion.
That layer can bend light (refraction), like a mirage.

Effects:

• Light from distant lamps, cars, or planes can “float” higher than they really are.

• As the inversion wavers, they appear to ascend or descend.

• Combined with fog, they flicker and seem to dance or swarm across the sky.

This is why some observers describe the lights as moving “from low in the sky to high above” — it’s a refractive illusion caused by wavy air density layers.

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💨 3. Turbulence and diffraction

Fog isn’t uniform — it’s always moving.
When turbulent pockets of air shift, the refractive index of the atmosphere changes rapidly.
The scattered light then appears to twinkle, jump, or split into many points.

To your eyes, these look like:

• tiny, fast-moving dots,

• zig-zag or looping motions,

• even multiple “objects” appearing and merging.

In reality, the sources are either:

• distant stationary lights, or

• reflections from your own vicinity (e.g., moisture droplets illuminated by ground lights).

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💡 4. How it can seem like the lights travel far

Because you’re looking at a vast, depthless background (a foggy sky), your brain has no reliable distance cues.
When the lights flicker or shift slightly, your perception “projects” them across huge distances.
It can seem as if a point near the horizon moves way up into the sky — when, geometrically, the apparent movement might be just a few arcminutes (a fraction of a degree).

It’s the same visual mechanism that makes stars appear to shoot around when you stare at them too long in a dark, hazy sky — intensified by fog.

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🧭 Summary: what’s likely happening

Effect	What you see	Real cause
Tiny star-like lights	Points of scattered reflection in fog	Distant light scattered by droplets
Erratic “UFO-like” motion	Random drifting, zigzagging	Autokinetic illusion + turbulence
Rising or falling lights	Climbing motion	Refraction in temperature inversion
Multiplying or splitting	Swarming flickers	Variable fog density and light diffraction

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If you want, I can walk you through a simple field test using a flashlight or laser pointer in fog — it perfectly reproduces the effect and lets you see the apparent “UFO swarm” illusion safely. Would you like that?