![]() ![]() In fact, Dent has landed on an Earth rebuilt by the dolphins. In So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, soon after Arthur Dent lands to his shock on Earth, he is told that the Vogons' apparent destruction of the planet (the very premise of the series) was a CIA-induced mass hallucination.One of them even makes up songs about stupid people who believe in dragons, so that no one will believe they have actually seen a dragon. They come from a culture that likes dragons, so it would be believable. In Dragon Blood, the heroes plan to explain the appearance with a dragon that way. ![]() In the film, there is only a single person sent through the machine, so it's written off as either a hallucination or something she made up. The ending of Contact has the folks on Earth writing off the experience of the protagonists as one big Mind Screw.The stupid explanation works because people are willing to ignore the reasons a shared hallucination isn't actually possible if it means they can keep believing they didn't really see an army of demons last week. Note that mass hallucination and mass hysteria are two different things.Įxplained in a lot of cases by people simply not wanting to believe in things like hostile aliens or demons from Hell coming to Earth. It's up there on the Stupid Explanations Chart with "it was a weather balloon" except that it's said with a straight face. The only time it's remotely plausible is if the people were already expecting to see whatever it was they believed they saw (which, in fact, is a very large part of how Stage Magic is performed) - and even then, they probably wouldn't share the particular details of the hallucination. Hallucinations don't work that way - even if multiple people were exposed to the same hallucinogen, they wouldn't see the same thing. "Explanation" cooked up by unbelievers whenever something that contradicts the Masquerade is very, very public. Tom Nesbitt, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
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