Crop Circles - and Why People Believed in Them (nytimes.com) 83
The New York Times tells the story of crop circles, "the mysterious patterns that regularly intrigued people around the world in the 1980s and '90s, prompting speculation about alien visitors, ancient spiritual forces, weather anomalies, secret weapons tests and other theories."
They call the phenomenon "a reminder that even before the era of social media and the internet, hoaxes were able to spread virally around the world and true believers could cling stubbornly to conspiracy theories despite a lack of evidence — or even the existence of evidence to the contrary." In the case of crop circles, the most important contradictory evidence emerged on Sept. 9, 1991, when the British newspaper Today ran a front-page story under the headline "Men who conned the world," revealing that two mischievous friends from Southampton had secretly made more than 200 of the patterns over the previous decade.
Doug Bower, then 67, and his friend Dave Chorley, 62, admitted to a reporter, Graham Brough, that in the late 1970s they had begun using planks of wood with ropes attached to each end to stamp circles in crops by holding the ropes in their hands and pressing the planks underfoot. They had then watched with amusement as their anonymous antics eventually attracted media attention and began being copied by imitators around the world... The real-life pranksters phoned the newspaper to come clean, according to Mr. Brough, now 62, who says he verified their claims by checking an archive of more than 200 crop circle designs stored in a shed behind Mr. Bower's home. The designs were clearly aged and matched the patterns they had made over the years, Mr. Brough said.
"I spent a week getting them to show me how they had done it all, and I have never laughed as much in my life," he recalled. "The prevailing wisdom at the time was that aliens were about to land any day, but it had all been kicked off by these two blokes who'd have a couple of pints at their favorite pub and then head out into the night to have a bit of fun...."
"The people who wanted to keep believing in aliens and everything else just ignored the evidence, no matter how obvious it was," said Rob Irving, who had begun emulating the two pranksters' work in 1989 and befriended them after they went public.... "The power of the art came from the mystery, and Doug forever regretted coming forward because the mystery was lost."
A professor of psychology at the University of Bristol in Britain explains to the Times the thought process of believers (which he says predated the internet). "instead of admitting that we live in a world we can't control, they take comfort from believing that there is agency involved and someone who can be blamed." The Times finds an example in a crop circle proponent who now believes, to this day, that even if crop circles are all man-made, the people making them have unwittingly "been prompted by an independent nonhuman mind."
Although after a new crop circle appeared, the Times obtained an alternative perspective — from a neighboring farmer. "It is just so irresponsible to be trespassing and destroying food in the middle of a global wheat shortage."
They call the phenomenon "a reminder that even before the era of social media and the internet, hoaxes were able to spread virally around the world and true believers could cling stubbornly to conspiracy theories despite a lack of evidence — or even the existence of evidence to the contrary." In the case of crop circles, the most important contradictory evidence emerged on Sept. 9, 1991, when the British newspaper Today ran a front-page story under the headline "Men who conned the world," revealing that two mischievous friends from Southampton had secretly made more than 200 of the patterns over the previous decade.
Doug Bower, then 67, and his friend Dave Chorley, 62, admitted to a reporter, Graham Brough, that in the late 1970s they had begun using planks of wood with ropes attached to each end to stamp circles in crops by holding the ropes in their hands and pressing the planks underfoot. They had then watched with amusement as their anonymous antics eventually attracted media attention and began being copied by imitators around the world... The real-life pranksters phoned the newspaper to come clean, according to Mr. Brough, now 62, who says he verified their claims by checking an archive of more than 200 crop circle designs stored in a shed behind Mr. Bower's home. The designs were clearly aged and matched the patterns they had made over the years, Mr. Brough said.
"I spent a week getting them to show me how they had done it all, and I have never laughed as much in my life," he recalled. "The prevailing wisdom at the time was that aliens were about to land any day, but it had all been kicked off by these two blokes who'd have a couple of pints at their favorite pub and then head out into the night to have a bit of fun...."
"The people who wanted to keep believing in aliens and everything else just ignored the evidence, no matter how obvious it was," said Rob Irving, who had begun emulating the two pranksters' work in 1989 and befriended them after they went public.... "The power of the art came from the mystery, and Doug forever regretted coming forward because the mystery was lost."
A professor of psychology at the University of Bristol in Britain explains to the Times the thought process of believers (which he says predated the internet). "instead of admitting that we live in a world we can't control, they take comfort from believing that there is agency involved and someone who can be blamed." The Times finds an example in a crop circle proponent who now believes, to this day, that even if crop circles are all man-made, the people making them have unwittingly "been prompted by an independent nonhuman mind."
Although after a new crop circle appeared, the Times obtained an alternative perspective — from a neighboring farmer. "It is just so irresponsible to be trespassing and destroying food in the middle of a global wheat shortage."
Government Disinformation At Work (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Government Disinformation At Work (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Government Disinformation At Work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Government Disinformation At Work (Score:4, Interesting)
“The rash assertion that 'God made man in His own image' is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths.”
Arthur C. Clarke
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I mean, if he's God, that could still be true.
He/she/it could appear as any species in the universe presumably.
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The faithful are extremely flexible, but every time they have to tie another knot in their beliefs they lose followers. "In his image" is quite a bit less, uh, "personal", if "his image" actually means "literally anything."
Re: Government Disinformation At Work (Score:4, Interesting)
“The rash assertion that 'God made man in His own image' is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths.”
Arthur C. Clarke
Science has over the preceding centuries (even millenniums) pushed religion back from deities being attributed to detailed interference with the daily life of humans to more and more distant and undetectable interference. There are of course setbacks in this development but in general the accumulation of scientific knowledge leaves fewer and fewer areas for religious "explanations". The breaking of the assertion that man is created in Gods image will just be another step in that direction.
I would recommend reading (or listening to) the ~2,900 years old Iliad or the Odyssey and how the Greek Gods were much closer to humans both in how they thought, acted and interacted. Their direct influence was very direct and it was for example not uncommon for the gods to have children with humans. They also expected humans to make sacrifices to them all the time in order to gain their favor and help them. Reading those ancient poems will provide you with an insight into the religious feelings of men around that time. Around the same time the writing of the old testament began which portrayed a God which was more remote and often less direct in the way he interacted with humans. And the new testament continued this tradition. But Gods interference with humans and the expectations of how humans pay tribute to the God was still very close.
With the advent and advance of science the space for divine intervention in the affairs of men has however shrinked and is continuing to shrink as we speak. The scientific explanations are simply outcompeting religious explanations (only time will tell if the trend will continue, but I think so). Thunder can be explained from the natural laws, The Earth is rotating around The Sun, the evolution of life can be explained scientifically without divine intervention, the evolution of the universe can be explained from a short time after The Big Bang until now and the list goes on and on with science providing well founded explanations for phenomena that were previously attributed to divine intervention. And with time this list will just become longer and this will leave religions with less and less opportunity to provide meaning for people.
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>old testament began which portrayed a God which was more remote and often less direct in the way he interacted with humans. And the new testament continued this tradition.
This link in your chain of reasoning doesn't make any sense. You are saying that an immanent God is "more remote" than a God in the Heavens? How, exactly?
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>old testament began which portrayed a God which was more remote and often less direct in the way he interacted with humans. And the new testament continued this tradition.
This link in your chain of reasoning doesn't make any sense. You are saying that an immanent God is "more remote" than a God in the Heavens? How, exactly?
More remote in the way that the deity influences the World. The new testament deity may be omnipresent but his presence is less linked to physical representations than previously. But even if you disagree (and you may have some valid arguments): My point is that there is a long term development in which religious explanations are being pushed back in area after area. If you for example compare Christian practice in the Medieval to Christian practice now you will see that many of the phenomena that were prev
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Re: Government Disinformation At Work (Score:2)
Nor by an old book written by goat herders.
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Government has potential to loose alot from discovery of other life - especially if the other life is space faring, with other forms of government.
Suddenly the government may find that it's form of government (whichever it is, democratic, monarchy, dictatorship, etc) is found to be backwards compared to something else new.
And people will start comparing how the alien governments react and work compared to whatever you may have in your own countries.
Watched the show, "V"? Not saying aliens will probably come
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I always hear this claim by people not religious.
If you believe in a God that created life, why would more life impact that belief? If anything, it strengthens it and makes our evolution look less like a fluke.
We have a variation of those here (Score:4, Funny)
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We get crop cylinders. Sometimes they'll be lining the whole edge of a field from one end to the other. Weird! ;-)
I've seen them, but the smaller cuboid ones predate them.
However I have recently been seeing very large cuboid ones, about the same size as the cylindrical ones. It really makes you wonder as what is going on that you don't really know about.
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Funny cows.
Circles (Score:2)
Although after a new crop circle appeared, the Times obtained an alternative perspective — from a neighboring farmer. "It is just so irresponsible to be trespassing and destroying food in the middle of a global wheat shortage."
Yeah, right. No farmer ever used to charge money to go and visit the crop circle.
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Although after a new crop circle appeared, the Times obtained an alternative perspective — from a neighboring farmer. "It is just so irresponsible to be trespassing and destroying food in the middle of a global wheat shortage."
Yeah, right. No farmer ever used to charge money to go and visit the crop circle.
Yeah, a farmer milking the lookie Lou's further trampling the food product is really helping deliver much needed food to the market.
Re:Circles (Score:5, Insightful)
A farm operates to make money, if they can make more money selling tickets to view crop circles than selling food crops thats what they'll do.
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There's nothing wrong with the farmer making the
crop circles himself, or hiring someone to do it.
But wrecking a crop while trespassing on someone else's
farm is wrong.
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What could you expect to see from ground level?
Re:Two old geezers (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. Two old uneducated geezers with a couple of planks managed to create the most accurate Mandelbrot sets ever, at night, after a couple of beers. Sounds legit.
That one [york.ac.uk] was not too far from Cambridge University, so I wouldn't rule out not-Doug-and-Dave-but-still-human intervention.
Also from this page:
I do so love the way so many of these elaborate crop "circles" are oriented along the tractor lines — and the way the pseudoscientists and alien apologists never seem to find this in the least bit suspicious.
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If you look at the image at the link you kindly provided, you can see that the Mandelbrot they made isn't quite symmetrical and lacks a lot of detail, especially near the "arse end".
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If you look at the image at the link you kindly provided, you can see that the Mandelbrot they made isn't quite symmetrical and lacks a lot of detail, especially near the "arse end".
Hey, if aliens exist I'd bet lazy aliens exist. Maybe the ones defacing our planet with graffiti dropped out of Alpha Centauri High School... and have been making progressively more complex crop circles over the last few decades. Or maybe these are religious symbols that their God ordered them to mark us with...
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To be fair, if I had an interstellar space ship I'd probably go around leaving cryptic messages for more primitive civilizations to ponder. That Mandelbrot looks to be about my level of laziness.
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I do so love the way so many of these elaborate crop "circles" are oriented along the tractor lines — and the way the pseudoscientists and alien apologists never seem to find this in the least bit suspicious.
Aliens with OCD??
Re:Two old geezers (Score:5, Insightful)
A better theory than beings with faster than light travel and anti gravity technology traveled to this planet for the purpose of stomping on wheat.
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Maybe it's their version of tagging. The reason we never see two crop circles the same is because there are different groups coming through and leaving their mark (temporarily).
Re:Two old geezers (Score:5, Funny)
Or stomp on wheat.
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42
Re: Two old geezers (Score:3)
Or the aliens actually look just like us, strapping wooden boards to their feet then stomping around fields, and then coming clean saying it was all a hoax. :>
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You forgot to give us the stats on "the most accurate Mandlebrot sets ever".
Re:Two old geezers (Score:5, Informative)
This is an interesting aspect to a lot of supernatural stuff. "The most accurate Mandelbrot sets ever," pyramids created with inhuman mathematical accuracy, etc.
That crop art looks vaguely like the coarsest level of a Mandelbrot set from a distance, but it doesn't have any of the right structure beyond that. It's certainly not a fractal.
Re:Two old geezers (Score:5, Funny)
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Uhm, yes. (Score:1)
"instead of admitting that we live in a world we can't control, they take comfort from believing that there is agency involved and someone who can be blamed."
That sounds a whole lot like... a world we can't control.
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It's almost as if people prefer the world we can't control.
Re:Signs Signs Everywhere There're Signs (Score:4, Informative)
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I don't think AC/DC even covered that song, but Tesla did.
Global wheat shortage (Score:4, Funny)
global
Still hanging on to that round Earth belief, I see.
Crop Circles are created by aliens (Score:1, Insightful)
People believe in talking snakes (Score:1)
So it's normal they believe in other crap too.
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A talking-snakes fan downvoted me, isn't that a sin?
Someone advanced more... (Score:1)
Behold.. (Score:2)
Behold the awesome power of real ale. If you know English ale then you know why this could not have happened anywhere else. Especially not France.
Re: Behold.. (Score:1)
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You're familiar with uninformed nonsense but know nothing about ale. Are you French?
Re: Behold.. (Score:2)
Explanation doesn't only apply to aliens (Score:2)
Having people who said they did the circles is just as good a person to "blame" as aliens. And the "agency" word is confusing for me there (is it that they want to choose the answer? Any choice would match that need).
I think distrust of central authority, hope/expectation we're not alone in the universe, and lack of interest or ability to lie in the same way these hoaxes require... are more likely explanations of the thought processes for "believers".
Bad education (Score:5, Insightful)
I blame it on bad education.
When people were taught in school to simply believe a collection of "facts" they were told, rather than being taught a system of how to logically reach conclusions from known facts, because some might reach a conclusion that the school would not like. Well, you get some who would grow up to believe anything because they read it somewhere.
How many science teachers in grade school took the time to explain, even briefly, how we knew what they are teaching is right? When evolution was taught as "just a theory", rather than as a conclusion resulting from a huge amount of evidence, and the farce called "intelligent design" could be given equal weight, how can you blame the students for believing any explanation for crop circles that one can actually see?
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I believe in crop circles because I eat Cheerios and Froot-Loops every morning. Fact: they're all circles!
Re: Bad education (Score:1)
Re:Bad education (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad education (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we have the internet, so honestly there's no excuse for believing in this crap.
Oh, you sweet summer child. It's not 1997 anymore. It's time we had a talk.
See, we used to think the internet would shine the light of truth over everything, exposing crap for what it was while simultaneously shrinking our world and bringing us all closer together. With instant access to the worlds collective knowledge, never again would anyone live in ignorance.
Well, it turns out that the internet is really good at amplifying crap. Worse, it actively walls-off and protects believers in crap from anyone or anything that might challenge the crap they believe in. There's nothing so crazy, so unbelievable, so outrageous that the internet can't promote. Hell, it's got some people drinking industrial bleach to cure a disease that they don't believe even exists.
I'd be willing to bet that there is significantly more high-visibility information online promoting crop circles than debunking them. I doubt it's even close.
Re:Bad education (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bad education (Score:5, Insightful)
For those of us who can distinguish wheat from chaff, this is exactly what it's done. As someone born in the early 80s, I used to wonder about things like crop circles, bigfoot, etc. The internet made it very easy to tell the charlatans from the scientists. It's true that there are a lot of people who aren't able to tell truth from lies - I can't explain that, and I don't try to
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Why? (Score:1)
We were told on various shows of odd characteristics to the sites. Here are the ones I remember being alleged:
Cellular oddities in the wheat from the circles. I even remember some of the grains being claimed to be magnetic.
Unidentified noises in the fields afterward.
Animals acting oddly in the fields afterward.
Allegedly, when the two guys that claimed responsibility, they were unable to demonstrate the ability to form the more complex shapes in the time allotted.
Video footage of odd lights hovering over th
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So if I make up enough bullshit claims, it becomes a fact because "It can't all be false"?
No wonder religions still work.
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I had a kite made out of aluminised plastic sheet, and my brother had a headlight from a 1940's Ford and a car battery on what was left of a child's pushchair.
We climbed up a hill at midnight and he used the headlight to illuminate my kite.
Next day, the newspapers would report how people had seen bright lights in the sky zooming about vast distances at tremendous speeds.
We did this several times on Primrose
Terry Pratchett called it (Score:5, Informative)
The people who wanted to keep believing in aliens and everything else just ignored the evidence, no matter how obvious it was
Terry Pratchett called it in Johnny and the Bomb:
Kasandra was good at knowing things that were hushed up by the government, especially considering they had been, well, hushed up. They were always slightly occult. When giant footprints had appeared around the town centre during some snow last year there had been two theories. There was Kir - Kasandra's, which was that it was Bigfoot, and Johnny's, which was that it was a combination of Bigmac and two 'Giant Rubber Feet, A Wow at Parties!!!!' from the Joke Emporium in Penny Street. Ki - Kasandra's theory had the backing of so many official sources in the books she'd read that it practically outweighed Johnny's, which was merely based on watching him do it.
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Cognitive dissonance? (Score:1)
A professor of psychology at the University of Bristol in Britain explains to the Times the thought process of believers (which he says predated the internet). "instead of admitting that we live in a world we can't control, they take comfort from believing that there is agency involved and someone who can be blamed."
WTF? This makes absolutely zero sense to me. If believers took comfort in "agency" and someone to blame, wouldn't they believe that the circles were man made? Believing that they were created by aliens would fall under the "world we can't control" bit, no?
pürevailing wisdom ?? (Score:2)
If your prevailing wisdom was coming from the thew daily mail or equivalent, yes. But for everybody else from the start was that the prevailing wisdom was that all those circle had an earthly origin. I know they quoted the guy, but let us be real here : if your "prevailing wisdom" for an explanation include any the following : alien, bigfoot, the lizard people , and similar, then you are not doing any wisdom at all.
Re: pürevailing wisdom ?? (Score:1)
Re:prevailing wisdom ?? (Score:2)
What an appropriate signature for this thread.
The perfect hoax for the time (Score:3)
Thankfully we didn't turn ourselves into radioactive dust.
Don't worry, NASA will investigate (Score:2)
Surely after spending millions in taxpayer dollars, they'll find a link from UFOs to crop circles.
World of dolts (Score:1)
The vast vast majority of earthlings believe in the existence of some deity. To them, that is a certainty. When that is a certainty, any other seemingly unlikely assertion becomes entirely plausible, if not likely.
Spy Satellite Markers? (Score:2)
I always thought they were placed by governments to be used by spy satellites as temporary reference markers, testing, etc.
Spoiler (Score:2)
Spoiler: because there is no shortage of dumbasses.