Pattern matching

The video is interesting.  The X-Files background music detracts from the serious nature of the report--a poor editing decision by the El Paso TV station.  I was ready to dismiss this out of hand until they reached the side-by-side comparison of the lights over New York and the lights over El Paso.




I approach life with the assumption that I don't know everything.  I form a framework of what I think is true, and then I try very hard to allow new information to change my framework when it doesn't fit.

I can think of only four possible explanations:
1. Visitors have arrived from another planet.
2. A government is testing some new top secret weapon.
3. A new natural phenomenon has just begun to occur.
4. Somebody is playing a hoax.

I am inclined to dismiss the first three explanations as being too incredibly unlikely.  Long-distance space travel is just plain hard.  Governments have not demonstrated the competence to build technology leaps this large.  And any government that was competent enough to do that wouldn't show it off in the sky above New York City.  And any natural phenomenon would not occur for the first and second times in the same week, like this.

The more times this happens the more likely we are to get an explanation.  My guess is that it has to happen at least ten times or we will not get an explanation.

If I were the marketing director for a new movie about aliens landing on earth, this is exactly the sort of viral marketing campaign I would do.  I wouldn't actually put the lights in the sky.  I would just film realistic crowd scenes of people looking at the sky and then use photoshop to fake the sky images.

That said, the video is still spooky and unnerving.