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I've heard enough of these stories to have no doubt this is a real experience, but what could a scientific explanation of this possibly look like? I take cohere

by robertk 11y ago

I've heard enough of these stories to have no doubt this is a real experience, but what could a scientific explanation of this possibly look like? I take coherence of worldview very seriously and will rewrite my entire ontology if necessary, but I'm having difficulties here. I don't want to accept the cognitive dissonance and say you're making it up or are fabricating the memory, or simply dismiss this comment altogether. On the other hand, it seems a very difficult hallucination to conjure.

themodelplumber 11y ago
Giving possible scientific explanations for supernatural phenomena on HN: It's like asking for downvotes. There's very little social approval of that behavior here.
- robertk 11y ago
  The problem is you're using "supernatural" as a semantic stop sign (http://lesswrong.com/lw/it/semantic_stopsigns/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/it/semantic_stopsigns/). Would it help if I rephrased it as: given this natural phenomenon reported by thousands of people in a wide array of circumstances, what is a possible scientific explanation?
  - dasil003 11y ago
    Excellently put. "Supernatural" around here is just shorthand for "bullshit", something is only "supernatural" until it is explained, and then it just "natural" and no one has a problem with it. But where I think this is harmful is for rationalists who don't want to acknowledge that some things may be true but ultimately unprovable or unexplainable because of the limited human perspective. That's what I think is interesting about philosophy and metaphysics—the ability to play around and ask what-if about things which probably are unknowable. This opens you up to a much wider world of ideas than that which is reasonably tractable by today's science.
    - smtddr 11y ago
      You have no idea how much I agree with you. http://qz.com/476722/be-careful-your-love-of-science-looks-a-lot-like-religion/ http://qz.com/476722/be-careful-your-love-of-science-looks-a... I submitted that article awhile back, never made it anywhere. The incredibly unyielding trust in scientific measurements on HN is amazing to me. I agree that science has proven itself an amazing tool of mankind, but I also believe the true nature of the universe, spacetime and the human mind is beyond the reach of human science... or rather, when that truth presents itself to us we'll have to throw out so many things we thought were constants that the result will have us giving up on science all together. In the same way modern scientists look at history's voodoo & whichcraft... some future scholars will laugh at the concept of science.
    - fsloth 11y ago
      While I appreciate that mind should be given room to flow I find searches for provable and explainable things far more fruitful than pure metaphysical constructs. Mainly because we are so good at fooling ourselves and our thought processes are so full of errors that I'm highly skeptical of the "truth" value of any thought process that does not perform stringent reality checks from experimental data or mathematics. Then again, to find new interesting points of view mind should be given the capability to flow freely - but to actually utilize those fantasies in finding new truths requires also hard labor.
    - Retra 11y ago
      A rationalist who cannot find value in marginalizing errors in decision-making by some process has no grounds to accept that process as meaningful or valid. And dreaming up ideas about things you believe to be unknowable is exactly that. That this opens you up to a much wider world of ideas is not surprising. As soon as you abandon the constraints of fact, you are free to think about any number of fictions. However, these fictions don't provide you any real advantage, which is why they are called fictions to begin with.
adventured 11y ago
This one has an easy explanation. The child was making noises while sleeping, perhaps having a bad dream, prompting an adult to pick him/her up. The child was exceptionally sleepy, groggy, slipping in and out of awareness. The adult walked back over to the other adults, and the pizza, while holding the child. If you've ever seen how out of it a very tired child can be, you understand that's more than enough to explain the sense of out of body + seeing above the table. We're talking about a four year old after all, their comprehension of the awake/asleep line in that circumstance would be extremely low. Even for an adult, it can be easy to confuse whether you're still in a dream briefly upon waking.
- prawn 11y ago
  You're quite likely right. My three year old wakes most nights in some sort of semi-aware panic. It's a fairly bizarre state - sometimes coherent, sometimes not, sometimes eyes open, sometimes a little zombie.
- simonh 11y ago
  There;s a pretty good chance this is the answer, but even if the child couldn't see the table from above but only reach and see things near the edge, if they could interact with objects on the table at all they'd still have some kind of mental model of the objects on the table and their positions and orientation. That could be enough to be able to generate an impression of seeing the table from above. When my eldest was about 6 or 7 she woke us up because the was wandering around upstairs opening all the doors. I lead her to the toilet and when she'd finished took her to bed and tucked her in. The next morning she told me she'd had a weird dream that she'd been going around the house opening all the doors looking for something, but had no memory of me or going to the toilet.
Chathamization 11y ago
Not sure why you don't want to think that it could be a false memory; those are pretty common, particularly when you're dealing with a very young child and a very old memory (also seems to be common when dealing with dreams). Of course there are other possible explanations as well. Another user user points out it could have been a groggy child being carried. It could also be a groggy child that either saw for a few moments or heard people talk about the square pizza, and then incorporated that into their dream.

by robertk 11y ago

themodelplumber 11y ago

Giving possible scientific explanations for supernatural phenomena on HN: It's like asking for downvotes. There's very little social approval of that behavior here.

robertk 11y ago
The problem is you're using "supernatural" as a semantic stop sign (http://lesswrong.com/lw/it/semantic_stopsigns/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/it/semantic_stopsigns/). Would it help if I rephrased it as: given this natural phenomenon reported by thousands of people in a wide array of circumstances, what is a possible scientific explanation?
- dasil003 11y ago
  Excellently put. "Supernatural" around here is just shorthand for "bullshit", something is only "supernatural" until it is explained, and then it just "natural" and no one has a problem with it. But where I think this is harmful is for rationalists who don't want to acknowledge that some things may be true but ultimately unprovable or unexplainable because of the limited human perspective. That's what I think is interesting about philosophy and metaphysics—the ability to play around and ask what-if about things which probably are unknowable. This opens you up to a much wider world of ideas than that which is reasonably tractable by today's science.
  - smtddr 11y ago
    You have no idea how much I agree with you. http://qz.com/476722/be-careful-your-love-of-science-looks-a-lot-like-religion/ http://qz.com/476722/be-careful-your-love-of-science-looks-a... I submitted that article awhile back, never made it anywhere. The incredibly unyielding trust in scientific measurements on HN is amazing to me. I agree that science has proven itself an amazing tool of mankind, but I also believe the true nature of the universe, spacetime and the human mind is beyond the reach of human science... or rather, when that truth presents itself to us we'll have to throw out so many things we thought were constants that the result will have us giving up on science all together. In the same way modern scientists look at history's voodoo & whichcraft... some future scholars will laugh at the concept of science.
  - fsloth 11y ago
    While I appreciate that mind should be given room to flow I find searches for provable and explainable things far more fruitful than pure metaphysical constructs. Mainly because we are so good at fooling ourselves and our thought processes are so full of errors that I'm highly skeptical of the "truth" value of any thought process that does not perform stringent reality checks from experimental data or mathematics. Then again, to find new interesting points of view mind should be given the capability to flow freely - but to actually utilize those fantasies in finding new truths requires also hard labor.
  - Retra 11y ago
    A rationalist who cannot find value in marginalizing errors in decision-making by some process has no grounds to accept that process as meaningful or valid. And dreaming up ideas about things you believe to be unknowable is exactly that. That this opens you up to a much wider world of ideas is not surprising. As soon as you abandon the constraints of fact, you are free to think about any number of fictions. However, these fictions don't provide you any real advantage, which is why they are called fictions to begin with.

adventured 11y ago

This one has an easy explanation. The child was making noises while sleeping, perhaps having a bad dream, prompting an adult to pick him/her up. The child was exceptionally sleepy, groggy, slipping in and out of awareness. The adult walked back over to the other adults, and the pizza, while holding the child. If you've ever seen how out of it a very tired child can be, you understand that's more than enough to explain the sense of out of body + seeing above the table. We're talking about a four year old after all, their comprehension of the awake/asleep line in that circumstance would be extremely low. Even for an adult, it can be easy to confuse whether you're still in a dream briefly upon waking.

prawn 11y ago
You're quite likely right. My three year old wakes most nights in some sort of semi-aware panic. It's a fairly bizarre state - sometimes coherent, sometimes not, sometimes eyes open, sometimes a little zombie.
simonh 11y ago
There;s a pretty good chance this is the answer, but even if the child couldn't see the table from above but only reach and see things near the edge, if they could interact with objects on the table at all they'd still have some kind of mental model of the objects on the table and their positions and orientation. That could be enough to be able to generate an impression of seeing the table from above. When my eldest was about 6 or 7 she woke us up because the was wandering around upstairs opening all the doors. I lead her to the toilet and when she'd finished took her to bed and tucked her in. The next morning she told me she'd had a weird dream that she'd been going around the house opening all the doors looking for something, but had no memory of me or going to the toilet.

Chathamization 11y ago

Not sure why you don't want to think that it could be a false memory; those are pretty common, particularly when you're dealing with a very young child and a very old memory (also seems to be common when dealing with dreams). Of course there are other possible explanations as well. Another user user points out it could have been a groggy child being carried. It could also be a groggy child that either saw for a few moments or heard people talk about the square pizza, and then incorporated that into their dream.