Predictive processing frameworks for perception can explain recent drone sightings in the United States

[Gary C]

Members have touched on a number of the points covered in this article but the authors here pull the important ones together under a psychological framework that provides a more generalized explanation for people who shout, "Drone!" before verifying their observations.

"Here, we make a unique contribution to the discussion by drawing on the predictive processing theory of perception (Box 1) to explain why healthy, intelligent, honest, and psychologically normal people might easily misperceive lights in the sky as threatening or extraordinary objects, especially in the context of WEIRD (western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic) societies. We argue that the uniquely sparse properties of skyborne and celestial stimuli make it difficult for an observer to update prior beliefs, which can be easily fit to observed lights. We briefly discuss the possible role of generalized distrust in scientific institutions [8] and ultimately argue for the importance of astronomy education for producing a society with prior beliefs that support veridical perception."

downloadable pdf - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.03013

 

[Ann K]

The lead author of the paper is from a very "iffy" organization, the "Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies, Santa Monica", and the information that I found about them that does not come directly from the institute is, alas, from AI:

The Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies (IACS) is a non-profit research organization focused on understanding consciousness. Founded in 2019 and located in Santa Monica, California, IACS employs various scientific methods, including neuroimaging and neuromodulation, to explore consciousness through immersive technologies and altered states of awareness. The institute aims to bridge ancient wisdom with modern science, particularly through practices like meditation and dark retreats, to investigate their effects on consciousness and well-being

In simpler language, they're into woo, so the paper should be read with that in mind. That doesn't invalidate the paper's conclusions, of course, but since it is free of either evidence or statistics, it is better characterized as an opinion piece.

 

[Gary C]

They do characterize the article as editorial in nature so they appear to be aware. I decided to share it in that vein.
I have not gotten through all the references yet to see what harder evidence might be behind their position.

 

[FatPhil]

... the uniquely sparse properties of skyborne and celestial stimuli ...

What's that in English?

How can properties of any object be sparse? Or not sparse, for that matter. You don't distribute properties of an object over anything, it just makes no sense.
If they mean a lack of clearly identifiable properties, then why didn't they say that?
I also don't think that the stimuli from skyborne and celestial objects should be called skyborne and celestial stimuli. The stimuli are eye-borne if anything-borne.
And what's so unique about skyborne and celestial objects? People see weird things in the bushes all the time - they'll need to prove the assertion they're unique before I accept it.

Pseudoacademic wordmush detected.

 

[beku-mant]

What's that in English?

How can properties of any object be sparse? Or not sparse, for that matter. You don't distribute properties of an object over anything, it just makes no sense.
If they mean a lack of clearly identifiable properties, then why didn't they say that?
I also don't think that the stimuli from skyborne and celestial objects should be called skyborne and celestial stimuli. The stimuli are eye-borne if anything-borne.
And what's so unique about skyborne and celestial objects? People see weird things in the bushes all the time - they'll need to prove the assertion they're unique before I accept it.

Pseudoacademic wordmush detected.

Stimuli is plural, and refers to (according to google AI overview) "any internal or external factors, agents, or environmental changes, such as light, sound, smell, or chemical compounds, that trigger a physical, sensory, or behavioral response in an organism."

So this indeed can be a sparse distribution of external factors coming from sky-born or celestial objects. By sparse, I assume they mean people have few "training examples" so to speak? So our models are under-informed, essentially making them prone to hallucination or confabulation.

Don't know about this particular group, but predictive processing is a pretty well established theory.

That said, maybe I should read the paper closer, but it seems to be somewhere between suggesting people are hallucinating and people are just interpreting things incorrectly. Are they supposed to be seeing and perceiving what looks like a normal object but because they don't know what a normal object looks like, they think it might be extraordinary? Or are they supposed to be perceiving things inaccurately because they haven't developed a stable model of what those things are supposed to look like, or some mixture of both?

Personally, I think the bulk of the reports can be explained as people seeing normal stuff and thinking maybe it's not normal. But I also think there was probably some actual unusual drone activity that reinforced it.