10 ms·

Bandersnatch Shows You What Depersonalization Disorder Feels Like

102 points by swamy_g 8y ago

mfoy_ 8y ago
I recently read "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow" and in it, the author raises many interesting ideas about consciousness, the mind, self, free will, etc. Would someone with DP/DR say they possess free will? Would you say you possess free will? Is the test for "having free will" simply feeling like you have it? Or saying that you have it? Does an AI that says "I am sentient. I possess free will." actually have those qualities? Do we?
- trevyn 8y ago
  Consider: It is useful to other human organisms to install a model of free will into you and make you believe that it is a thing that you have.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Isn't doing things because they are useful a sign of free will? A rock doesn't fall from a cliff because it's useful for it to do so.
    - trevyn 8y ago
      No, just an indication of available degrees of freedom and evolutionary pressure. It is useful for DNA replication machinery to have error-correction capabilities, does this mean DNA replication machinery has free will?
- unimpressive 8y ago
  Obvious resolution: There's no such thing, the universe is deterministic but not predictable. This doesn't matter very much in practice, punishment is about game theory so your 'free will' to perform or not perform an action is kind of irrelevant.
  - mfoy_ 8y ago
    That's my takeaway too. In practice, it doesn't really matter since we only have the one universe to observe, so there's no material difference between one model and the other.
    - trevyn 8y ago
      But be aware: The free-will model can be uninstalled from your brain, and this may have interesting side-effects. (Including possibly temporary DPDR, though I wouldn’t necessarily call DPDR a bad thing, just... atypical. And it helps to have solid coping strategies.)
- hotdesk 8y ago
  My understanding of the thinking about free will is that it actually is an illusion that's a byproduct of the way the brain processes, consolidates, and stores information (similar to the way consciousness is thought to be an emergent property of the same processes). I've read about studies showing that a decision is made at the neuronal level before a person is consciously aware of it, so it's not as though we consciously deliberate before making each decision. That is not to say that everything is pre-determined, or that we're hopeless to change our behavior. Our self-talk or conscious narrative help to create a feedback loop that can influence the way future decisions are arrived upon by reinforcing certain neural pathways over others, making some decisions more likely than others. And FWIW, I have dealt with DP/DR for a lot of years, and most of my symptoms fall to the side of feeling like everything is a dream state, or that neither I nor the outside world are actually real. The prolonged detached feeling can be super unnerving before you realize what's going on. I can see there being an aspect of a crisis of free will (or w/e) for others dealing with this, but I don't think it's necessarily true for all of us.
  - feanaro 8y ago
    > That is not to say that everything is pre-determined, or that we're hopeless to change our behavior. Our self-talk or conscious narrative help to create a feedback loop that can influence the way future decisions are arrived upon by reinforcing certain neural pathways over others, making some decisions more likely than others. Yet the self-talk or conscious narrative themselves are a result of a combination of deterministic and stochastic factors. We are not hopeless to change because we are systems that react and adapt to our environment all the time. We are a ship afloat a partly stochastic sea.
    - neuralzen 8y ago
      Hey, this is out of context, but I noticed you replied on a thread almost a month back saying you were interested in vajrayana visualization practices. Sorry I didn't notice your reply! I cannot reply to that thread anymore, but here's a link for you (sorry everyone else, just ignore this reply). https://studybuddhism.com/en/advanced-studies/vajrayana/tantra-theory/visualization-practice-in-tantra https://studybuddhism.com/en/advanced-studies/vajrayana/tant...
- swamy_g 8y ago
  It's one thing to contemplate whether you have free will or not. It could be a "fun" exercise. BUT to feel like you have no free will is an entirely a different beast. DP/DR sometimes makes you feel like you have no free will and that triggers a lot of panic. It also makes you feel like your "self" could disappear at any moment. This notion of no self is prevalent in eastern mysticism. Also, folks who have imbibed certain psychedelics can also lose their sense of self. So what we feel is not entirely made up, this disorder may be pointing to something important to look at. Here's another article if you are interested in learning more: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/12/enlightenments-evil-twin/383726/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/12/enlighten...
DaiHafVaho 8y ago
Fresh account for obvious reasons. I wonder whether I "suffer" from this. It's not really suffering. I am very comfortable being a meatbag who hallucinates that they are thinking thoughts; I know that none of it is really real in the way that physical artifacts are real. Now I have a new and better explanation for why I have visual hallucinations sometimes, particularly halos and fuzz. For anybody else: Don't worry. You aren't controlled by any one thing. You're a colony of trillions of cells, all working together to produce a mutually-beneficial outcome. Edit: Do I have free will? I don't think that the question makes sense. I have free will in the same way that my subatomic particles have free will [0]. I have the ability to choose and to choose not to choose, but none of that entails free will [1]. I can even say that I have free will, but that does not mean that I have free will [2]. I think that, even if free will is a thing, maybe I am not a thing which can have free will because maybe I am not a thing at all. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem [1] https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec18.html https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec18.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
- mfoy_ 8y ago
  Interesting, I really appreciate you sharing your perspective. I mean no judgement by this, so I put a certain word in scare-quotes, but would you say that perhaps everyone who doesn't have DP/DR is actually more "delusional"?
  - DaiHafVaho 8y ago
    I'm not sure. It's possible that I came to my conclusions purely through philosophical reasoning, and that I am suffering the sort of defect that famously consumed Cantor or Gödel or Pirsig. It's easy to say, "I'm not crazy! You're the one who's crazy!" Or perhaps there is a repressed childhood of abuse somewhere in the memories, but who can tell whether repressed memories are a real thing, or whether memories are trustworthy in general. At the same time, though, people delude themselves all the time. It's a cultural thing; I think that memetics is the right field of study for figuring out how that works. And once one starts to realize how delusional their cultural beliefs are, one cannot help but start examining themselves. Upon learning about p-zombies, for example, I realized that I must be a p-zombie, because I had no evidence to the alternative and no way to refute the argument.
ada1981 8y ago
I thought bandsnatch did a great job of articulating what psychosis was like. I spent the better part of a decade in that state of mind. Grateful to have rebuilt my psyche from scratch and be free of that. Occasionally I catch a flicker of it and need to bring myself back into a state of relaxation.
- swamy_g 8y ago
  Would you be willing to share more? What triggered it? And what were your symptoms like?
  - ada1981 8y ago
    In college freshman year I tried to teleport to see my gf by driving into the back of a semi on I-79. As far as I can tell it didn’t work. I spent a lot of time lost in what felt like a deep metaphor / parable. One time I thought my gf as an alien from another star system; when I looked out at the city of Madison, WI I saw present day Madison but also an overlay of an ancient city — it felt like this was some sort of eternal city that always was. I walked into a church and saw the priest was a vampire. I had a conversation with a time traveling Albert Einstein at an airport in Boston. At times it felt like childhood make beleive, there was still a tether back to reality but I was deep in the other realm. At times terrifying. Flights into the depths of hell and judeo-Christian mythology. I was also in and out of suicidal depression. Somehow I also managed to start a number of projects and get lots of press and even some investment, but I couldn’t keep anything going sustainably. A few years ago I was at wits end and had a vision that guided me to start feeling my emotions. That led to Psychedlic therapy, Somatic Therapy and Breathwork. It also led to a new context for relationship and learning how to navigate love induced psychosis and coming out the otherside more healed. Eventually I was able to get underneath the symptoms. I found abuse in my childhood, dishonest and narcissistic care givers, a school that couldn’t hold my high IQ, bullying, etc. I was also always fascinated with technology, psychology, shamanism, the occult, Psychedlics, personal development from a very very early age... sometimes this feels like my purpose. Anyhow, I’m symptom free, healthier than ever, in love and engaged, running a fairly full transformational coaching practice (supporting unicorn founders and other creative minds), building an eco village island at Majagual.org and have no need for medications. Western Psych said I’d be on meds for the rest of my life. Turns out I followed the path of others like Jung - going mad and then creating your own tools and frameworks to find your way back out.
brootstrap 8y ago
Interesting and good to learn about this real problem. The show had me really on edge (like all black mirror content) until they kind of broke the 4th (5th wall?) with the netflix thing at the end. Watching this guy talk to his therapist because he was being controlled by netflix was friggen hilarious to me... I think i have felt this way at time, usually when really high. The whole LSD trip with colin in particular.. I liked that rant, the multiple realities, the time is a flat circle thing. The movie hit pretty hard, good on black mirror guys for pushing boundaries of film as we know. Even some folks who dont usually get into black mirror were like, well i want to retry it and pick the different cereal to see what happens!
- ardit33 8y ago
  Yo, no spoilers please...... or at least warn about it. Not everybody has seen it.
  - twothumbsup 8y ago
    The show has been out over month now and you willingly came into a thread about the show. Any plot that's spoiled is entirely on you.
    - setr 8y ago
      Tbf I had no idea this thread was about black mirror from the title, as I wasn’t aware of the director, and I normally read comments before the article
      - twothumbsup 8y ago
        I thought "Black Mirror" was in the title, my mistake.
    - asavadatti 8y ago
      A warning doesn't hurt anyone
    - 8y ago
empath75 8y ago
This is actually a pretty common side effect of chronic mdma use — I went through this a bit in my mid 20s. And I had a friend go on a few month bender after burning man who was telling me he could read minds and was living inside a simulation. Not in a theoretical, isn’t it fun to think about way, but in a “I can control reality with my thoughts” kind of way. Definitely not a pleasant feeling. Seems like somehow the serotonin system is responsible for maintaining your belief in reality and free will.
- swamy_g 8y ago
  Happens much more with other psychedelics. In my experience, MDMA produces the least bit of a "psychedelic hangover", other than feeling depressed.
  - empath75 8y ago
    Try doing it every week for a year.
- davebryand 8y ago
  The bodies of knowledge and practical tools (meditation/breathing/etc) from the great spiritual traditions over many thousands of years come to exactly this conclusion: your consciousness DOES create your reality. "Control" of reality is a different beast, you have to ascend to very high levels to achieve that, but it's 100% possible and happens all around us.
  - aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
    >it's 100% possible and happens all around us. Prove it
  - mfoy_ 8y ago
    I think you have it a bit backwards. You perceive reality through your consciousness. So if your consciousness were to interject a filter of its own choosing, your subjective reality would be affected. However, this has no bearing on objective reality. You can't will bad things to not happen, but you can choose to perceive them as less bad. It's like writing a SQL query "SELECT name, MIN(51, objectiveScore) as subjectiveScore FROM TestResults" and then say "hey look, no one failed!". The data in the table is still going to have any sub-50 scores it originally did, you've just turned a blind eye to them.
afpx 8y ago
Bandersnatch made me feel like I participated in an invasive data science project that I didn’t agree to.
- pcmaffey 8y ago
  I don't know if this point gets brought up much, but I wholeheartedly agree. The data generated from situational A/B testing is scary. Just imagine what you could learn by looking at one viewer's choices across a range of situations that you control... While I doubt the mass-analytics is there yet, it made me shudder at the privacy implications for the future.
  - gtremper 8y ago
    This reminds me of Westworld.
  - kian 8y ago
    Couldn't one technically do this right now with online games?
- gjs278 8y ago
  you agreed by watching
  - afpx 8y ago
    Thanks for pointing out the obvious. The problem isn’t the data science. The problem is that the show was developed primarily for data science but was described to viewers as fun, interactive fiction. Let’s be clear here: Netflix developed this show for the primary purpose of gathering data on me. Clearly many of the decisions only existed to test the effectiveness of product placement. Some other decisions were intended to cluster subscribers into segments. My issue is that I was deceived into thinking the interactivity was purely to enhance the story.
    - gjs278 8y ago
      get your schizophrenia checked out
clearing 8y ago
I haven't seen this, but as someone who's had DPDR for the better half of a decade, I don't think this article frames it 100% properly (which, to be fair, is harder with this than, say, general anxiety). Yes, fear does come up during derealization experiences, but the difference is there's no grounded "you" experiencing this fear, more that the fear comes as "the experiencer" reconciling the reality one experiences with a new and disconcerting distance. This reads more like a profile of Pure-O OCD (they're comorbid so I got the two-for-one), where there is somewhat logical rumination about a specific fear. I've never really had a DPDR experience where I was questioning my own free will. To me the external world at the time is best described as seeming aggressively real to the point it seems false, objects indistinct from others, bereft of any intent or memory. You feel like you've lost some foundational understanding of the world that has been instilled in you forever.
- fumar 8y ago
  Asking for a friend, did you seek a professional diagnosis?
  - clearing 8y ago
    I was seeing a CBT therapist for severe OCD at the time I was diagnosed with this. Unfortunately there isn’t really a specific therapy targeting DPDR like OCD, but anxiety reduction does help overall.
- bonesmoses 8y ago
  I had a very protracted DPDR experience start around when I was 12, and slowly dissipated over the course of a decade. I woke up one morning, and it was like I was slapped out of my body. It's like I was piloting a Me(ch) suit. I wasn't seeing through my eyes. They were transmitting, with perceivable lag and some kind of acknowledged overlay, their sensory data. It's like being embedded in _extremely advanced_ and nearly seamless VR, but also hyper aware of the "nearly" part. It's like the Uncanny Valley effect, but directing it toward your own sensory system. It doesn't feel quite real anymore, and you don't know why. So that's probably how I'd convey it. "You know the Uncanny Valley? Imagine everything you experienced felt that way." It's uniquely awful.
davebryand 8y ago
This is the state that most of us committing our lives to spiritual practice seek to achieve. All of these overlap with symptoms of Enlightenment, although the enlightened being has conscious control over all internal processes, so they are not only able to feel joy and love, they've reached the source of those emotions. * Detachment from self, feeling as though one is watching a movie about oneself. * A sense that one is not in control of one’s thoughts and actions. * Reality may seem dream-like or unreal. * Distorted sense of time. * Perceptual alterations like visual snow, halo around lights. * Emotional numbness, unable to feel joy or love.
- Juliate 8y ago
  For a very specific understanding of what "spiritual practice" means.
- omnicognate 8y ago
  There are lots of different ideas about enlightenment, but the one I'm most familiar with, Soto Zen, is the exact opposite of what is described there. If you're getting halos, feeling out of control and experiencing emotional numbness you're doing it (specifically Soto Zen) very, very wrong.
- thinkharder 8y ago
  The definitions of equanimity and disassociation sound really similar, but they are very different things. In Equanimity, you feel a connection to everything, with the sense of self and ego diminished or completely removed. In Disassociation, you feel disconnected from everything, floating free and completely alone. To be honest, I've never experienced equanimity, so I'm going off the descriptions I've read and had explained to me, in my own attempts at mindfulness meditation. Disassociation, I've experienced multiple times. It tends to happen when one is in an extremely stressful emotional state, and it's a big relief when it happens in that context, but it's a self-defense strategy, and not a healthy state. I suspect you could achieve it accidentally when trying for equanimity, but it isn't equanimity.
- mindgam3 8y ago
  What you are describing is getting high, not spiritual practice. Nothing wrong with getting high per se, but it can be extremely dangerous if you confuse those states with "Enlightenment". The experience of transcending one's ego identity may feel similar to dissociation or depersonalization at times. But the end result of awakening is not a dissociative state. It's being fully present to all of your emotions, not numbness at all, but simply not attached to them in the sense that they don't automatically dictate your response. You still feel all the things that apply to your normal sense of self, but you're able to observe them and act from a different place. There is a real risk to people getting lost on the spiritual path and ending up in places like nihilism or dissociation. Be careful.
danburbridge 8y ago
Interesting, the symptoms remind me a lot of many of the themes of Phillip K Dick's works, particularly the questioning of reality and consciousness.
- roywiggins 8y ago
  PKD had his own unusual experiences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick#Paranormal_experiences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick#Paranormal_expe...
randyrand 8y ago
Have DPDR, I appreciate that DPDR is becoming more talked about. Makes me feel less alone and less abnormal. Thankfully, I've slowly (~years) been returning to normal.
sergefaguet 8y ago
i feel a bit confused about this "disorder." i spend hundreds of hours a year meditating to get rid of my sense of self. it is the best thing about the LSD experience too. the idea that one is not in control of one's own actions is called "seeing the illusion of free will which is obvious to anyone who has ever seriously thought about the issue." the idea that you are watching a movie about something that does not actually have a self is called "ego death" or "enlightenment."
- sergefaguet 8y ago
  now i notice all the other comments here are about the same thing :)
- parf02 8y ago
  I experienced ego death on a very high dose of pot. I suffered from DP/DR for about three years after. It's not the same. In DP/DR, you feel completely disconnected from your body and "spirit". It's really not a pleasant feeling.
- swamy_g 8y ago
  The problem with DP/DR is that the loss of control/feeling of unrealness is not pleasant. It's the opposite. Your ego is not completely lost, it's still very much present. But it feels really threatened. You feel like you are on the edge most of the time. You feel like you might go insane or die any minute (when the intensity gets high). After years of getting my grounding, I feel like I can manage these feelings. I don't have them that often. But it takes practice, and you have to surrender when the feelings are overwhelming. For functioning in this world, you do need a sense of self. But it also helps when that self realizes that it is part of a whole. Without a self, I don't think you can operate in this reality, so there's no point trying to get rid of it.
  - renholder 8y ago
    >You feel like you are on the edge most of the time. You feel like you might go insane or die any minute (when the intensity gets high). Mine's been far milder (thankfully) and the best way I could explain that feeling is like being a boat with it's anchor dropped. You're very much the anchor but, when you hit the DP/PR, you're also - very much - the boat, as well - being tossed about by the waves. It's like events happen but you're kind of pedestrian to them, seing them after-the-fact, almost[0]. That's the best way that I can describe it but I'm not even doing it justice, overall; just from my own anecdotal experience(s) and it's a piss-poor analogy at that. Sorry. [0] - https://media.giphy.com/media/UrO3di2UKs4qA/giphy.gif https://media.giphy.com/media/UrO3di2UKs4qA/giphy.gif
charliebrownau 8y ago
I would not be surprised if the future labels 2010-2025 as the REGRESSIVE ERA As society is losing morals, common sense and the ability to logically think on a massive level
mentos 8y ago
Random aside: Anyone else watch the Fyre Festival documentary on Netflix? I feel like that could be an interesting choose your own adventure similar to how Bandersnatch was done. Let people make decisions as if they were in charge of the festival and see if they could come out the end of it having made it a success or not.
- sucrose 8y ago
  Yes, I was so intrigued by their story. I feel like the right person could pull it off. I've thought about this documentary non-stop for the past couple of days.
  - colemickens 8y ago
    > I feel like the right person could pull it off. I uh, I guess I'll bite. How? If anything, I think it's funny to imagine it as an interviewing exercise to suss out people with delusions of grandeur who have lived a life free of real-world consequences. They basically had a failed FEMA campsite without water or electricity, or effectively, shelter. It absolutely blows my mind and shakes my understanding of humanity to think that people got sucked into that or that there would be folks lining up to get suckered again, or that people somehow think it was ever achievable based on the timeline and current human time-travel technology. While I understand Billy's "charm" and even how to use it at times, it's amazing how enough of it will convince people to believe absolutely any delusional fantasy. Partying with a bunch of Insta influencers glued to their phone sounds like hell, anyway. Who doesn't want to hang out with the grown adult proudly bragging about urinating on all of the bedding?
    - mentos 8y ago
      I think maybe a timeline where they listened to the guy suggesting they use a cruise ship to transport people might be 1 correct choice. After that they said they chose between 10 venues, maybe there is a timeline where they could have done something on the main land (Nassau) and crowd sourced more appropriate villas with AirBnB. Delaying the event by 1 week to avoid the yachting event might have brought airbnb prices down to a reasonable threshold. Maybe secretly there is no actual successful decision tree and its just a dark reminder that some things are never meant to be. Maybe at the start there is an option 'refund everyones money' haha and thats the only positive outcome.
md224 8y ago
If one is having a panic attack regarding free will, it might be helpful to remember that if you're able to speak the words "I have no control", then you've proven yourself wrong: you just exerted control over your vocal chords. Helpful reminder that you're not a prisoner in your own body!
- jjnoakes 8y ago
  Unless whomever is controlling you made you say that so you'd think you were free...
  - md224 8y ago
    True, but then they'd need to be reading your mind to know that you were thinking about it. The plot thickens... Also, if this controller needs to do external things to influence what you think about, rather than just controlling your thoughts directly, then there's already a hint of free will in the choice of your thoughts.
- nnd 8y ago
  Volition is not the same thing as free will.
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102 points by swamy_g 8y ago

I recently read "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow" and in it, the author raises many interesting ideas about consciousness, the mind, self, free will, etc. Would someone with DP/DR say they possess free will? Would you say you possess free will? Is the test for "having free will" simply feeling like you have it? Or saying that you have it? Does an AI that says "I am sentient. I possess free will." actually have those qualities? Do we?

trevyn 8y ago
Consider: It is useful to other human organisms to install a model of free will into you and make you believe that it is a thing that you have.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Isn't doing things because they are useful a sign of free will? A rock doesn't fall from a cliff because it's useful for it to do so.
  - trevyn 8y ago
    No, just an indication of available degrees of freedom and evolutionary pressure. It is useful for DNA replication machinery to have error-correction capabilities, does this mean DNA replication machinery has free will?
unimpressive 8y ago
Obvious resolution: There's no such thing, the universe is deterministic but not predictable. This doesn't matter very much in practice, punishment is about game theory so your 'free will' to perform or not perform an action is kind of irrelevant.
- mfoy_ 8y ago
  That's my takeaway too. In practice, it doesn't really matter since we only have the one universe to observe, so there's no material difference between one model and the other.
  - trevyn 8y ago
    But be aware: The free-will model can be uninstalled from your brain, and this may have interesting side-effects. (Including possibly temporary DPDR, though I wouldn’t necessarily call DPDR a bad thing, just... atypical. And it helps to have solid coping strategies.)
hotdesk 8y ago
My understanding of the thinking about free will is that it actually is an illusion that's a byproduct of the way the brain processes, consolidates, and stores information (similar to the way consciousness is thought to be an emergent property of the same processes). I've read about studies showing that a decision is made at the neuronal level before a person is consciously aware of it, so it's not as though we consciously deliberate before making each decision. That is not to say that everything is pre-determined, or that we're hopeless to change our behavior. Our self-talk or conscious narrative help to create a feedback loop that can influence the way future decisions are arrived upon by reinforcing certain neural pathways over others, making some decisions more likely than others. And FWIW, I have dealt with DP/DR for a lot of years, and most of my symptoms fall to the side of feeling like everything is a dream state, or that neither I nor the outside world are actually real. The prolonged detached feeling can be super unnerving before you realize what's going on. I can see there being an aspect of a crisis of free will (or w/e) for others dealing with this, but I don't think it's necessarily true for all of us.
- feanaro 8y ago
  > That is not to say that everything is pre-determined, or that we're hopeless to change our behavior. Our self-talk or conscious narrative help to create a feedback loop that can influence the way future decisions are arrived upon by reinforcing certain neural pathways over others, making some decisions more likely than others. Yet the self-talk or conscious narrative themselves are a result of a combination of deterministic and stochastic factors. We are not hopeless to change because we are systems that react and adapt to our environment all the time. We are a ship afloat a partly stochastic sea.
  - neuralzen 8y ago
    Hey, this is out of context, but I noticed you replied on a thread almost a month back saying you were interested in vajrayana visualization practices. Sorry I didn't notice your reply! I cannot reply to that thread anymore, but here's a link for you (sorry everyone else, just ignore this reply). https://studybuddhism.com/en/advanced-studies/vajrayana/tantra-theory/visualization-practice-in-tantra https://studybuddhism.com/en/advanced-studies/vajrayana/tant...
swamy_g 8y ago
It's one thing to contemplate whether you have free will or not. It could be a "fun" exercise. BUT to feel like you have no free will is an entirely a different beast. DP/DR sometimes makes you feel like you have no free will and that triggers a lot of panic. It also makes you feel like your "self" could disappear at any moment. This notion of no self is prevalent in eastern mysticism. Also, folks who have imbibed certain psychedelics can also lose their sense of self. So what we feel is not entirely made up, this disorder may be pointing to something important to look at. Here's another article if you are interested in learning more: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/12/enlightenments-evil-twin/383726/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/12/enlighten...

DaiHafVaho 8y ago

Fresh account for obvious reasons. I wonder whether I "suffer" from this. It's not really suffering. I am very comfortable being a meatbag who hallucinates that they are thinking thoughts; I know that none of it is really real in the way that physical artifacts are real. Now I have a new and better explanation for why I have visual hallucinations sometimes, particularly halos and fuzz. For anybody else: Don't worry. You aren't controlled by any one thing. You're a colony of trillions of cells, all working together to produce a mutually-beneficial outcome. Edit: Do I have free will? I don't think that the question makes sense. I have free will in the same way that my subatomic particles have free will [0]. I have the ability to choose and to choose not to choose, but none of that entails free will [1]. I can even say that I have free will, but that does not mean that I have free will [2]. I think that, even if free will is a thing, maybe I am not a thing which can have free will because maybe I am not a thing at all. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem [1] https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec18.html https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec18.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

mfoy_ 8y ago
Interesting, I really appreciate you sharing your perspective. I mean no judgement by this, so I put a certain word in scare-quotes, but would you say that perhaps everyone who doesn't have DP/DR is actually more "delusional"?
- DaiHafVaho 8y ago
  I'm not sure. It's possible that I came to my conclusions purely through philosophical reasoning, and that I am suffering the sort of defect that famously consumed Cantor or Gödel or Pirsig. It's easy to say, "I'm not crazy! You're the one who's crazy!" Or perhaps there is a repressed childhood of abuse somewhere in the memories, but who can tell whether repressed memories are a real thing, or whether memories are trustworthy in general. At the same time, though, people delude themselves all the time. It's a cultural thing; I think that memetics is the right field of study for figuring out how that works. And once one starts to realize how delusional their cultural beliefs are, one cannot help but start examining themselves. Upon learning about p-zombies, for example, I realized that I must be a p-zombie, because I had no evidence to the alternative and no way to refute the argument.

ada1981 8y ago

I thought bandsnatch did a great job of articulating what psychosis was like. I spent the better part of a decade in that state of mind. Grateful to have rebuilt my psyche from scratch and be free of that. Occasionally I catch a flicker of it and need to bring myself back into a state of relaxation.

swamy_g 8y ago
Would you be willing to share more? What triggered it? And what were your symptoms like?
- ada1981 8y ago
  In college freshman year I tried to teleport to see my gf by driving into the back of a semi on I-79. As far as I can tell it didn’t work. I spent a lot of time lost in what felt like a deep metaphor / parable. One time I thought my gf as an alien from another star system; when I looked out at the city of Madison, WI I saw present day Madison but also an overlay of an ancient city — it felt like this was some sort of eternal city that always was. I walked into a church and saw the priest was a vampire. I had a conversation with a time traveling Albert Einstein at an airport in Boston. At times it felt like childhood make beleive, there was still a tether back to reality but I was deep in the other realm. At times terrifying. Flights into the depths of hell and judeo-Christian mythology. I was also in and out of suicidal depression. Somehow I also managed to start a number of projects and get lots of press and even some investment, but I couldn’t keep anything going sustainably. A few years ago I was at wits end and had a vision that guided me to start feeling my emotions. That led to Psychedlic therapy, Somatic Therapy and Breathwork. It also led to a new context for relationship and learning how to navigate love induced psychosis and coming out the otherside more healed. Eventually I was able to get underneath the symptoms. I found abuse in my childhood, dishonest and narcissistic care givers, a school that couldn’t hold my high IQ, bullying, etc. I was also always fascinated with technology, psychology, shamanism, the occult, Psychedlics, personal development from a very very early age... sometimes this feels like my purpose. Anyhow, I’m symptom free, healthier than ever, in love and engaged, running a fairly full transformational coaching practice (supporting unicorn founders and other creative minds), building an eco village island at Majagual.org and have no need for medications. Western Psych said I’d be on meds for the rest of my life. Turns out I followed the path of others like Jung - going mad and then creating your own tools and frameworks to find your way back out.

brootstrap 8y ago

Interesting and good to learn about this real problem. The show had me really on edge (like all black mirror content) until they kind of broke the 4th (5th wall?) with the netflix thing at the end. Watching this guy talk to his therapist because he was being controlled by netflix was friggen hilarious to me... I think i have felt this way at time, usually when really high. The whole LSD trip with colin in particular.. I liked that rant, the multiple realities, the time is a flat circle thing. The movie hit pretty hard, good on black mirror guys for pushing boundaries of film as we know. Even some folks who dont usually get into black mirror were like, well i want to retry it and pick the different cereal to see what happens!

ardit33 8y ago
Yo, no spoilers please...... or at least warn about it. Not everybody has seen it.
- twothumbsup 8y ago
  The show has been out over month now and you willingly came into a thread about the show. Any plot that's spoiled is entirely on you.
  - setr 8y ago
    Tbf I had no idea this thread was about black mirror from the title, as I wasn’t aware of the director, and I normally read comments before the article
    - twothumbsup 8y ago
      I thought "Black Mirror" was in the title, my mistake.
  - asavadatti 8y ago
    A warning doesn't hurt anyone
  - 8y ago

empath75 8y ago

This is actually a pretty common side effect of chronic mdma use — I went through this a bit in my mid 20s. And I had a friend go on a few month bender after burning man who was telling me he could read minds and was living inside a simulation. Not in a theoretical, isn’t it fun to think about way, but in a “I can control reality with my thoughts” kind of way. Definitely not a pleasant feeling. Seems like somehow the serotonin system is responsible for maintaining your belief in reality and free will.

swamy_g 8y ago
Happens much more with other psychedelics. In my experience, MDMA produces the least bit of a "psychedelic hangover", other than feeling depressed.
- empath75 8y ago
  Try doing it every week for a year.
davebryand 8y ago
The bodies of knowledge and practical tools (meditation/breathing/etc) from the great spiritual traditions over many thousands of years come to exactly this conclusion: your consciousness DOES create your reality. "Control" of reality is a different beast, you have to ascend to very high levels to achieve that, but it's 100% possible and happens all around us.
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
  >it's 100% possible and happens all around us. Prove it
- mfoy_ 8y ago
  I think you have it a bit backwards. You perceive reality through your consciousness. So if your consciousness were to interject a filter of its own choosing, your subjective reality would be affected. However, this has no bearing on objective reality. You can't will bad things to not happen, but you can choose to perceive them as less bad. It's like writing a SQL query "SELECT name, MIN(51, objectiveScore) as subjectiveScore FROM TestResults" and then say "hey look, no one failed!". The data in the table is still going to have any sub-50 scores it originally did, you've just turned a blind eye to them.

afpx 8y ago

Bandersnatch made me feel like I participated in an invasive data science project that I didn’t agree to.

pcmaffey 8y ago
I don't know if this point gets brought up much, but I wholeheartedly agree. The data generated from situational A/B testing is scary. Just imagine what you could learn by looking at one viewer's choices across a range of situations that you control... While I doubt the mass-analytics is there yet, it made me shudder at the privacy implications for the future.
- gtremper 8y ago
  This reminds me of Westworld.
- kian 8y ago
  Couldn't one technically do this right now with online games?
gjs278 8y ago
you agreed by watching
- afpx 8y ago
  Thanks for pointing out the obvious. The problem isn’t the data science. The problem is that the show was developed primarily for data science but was described to viewers as fun, interactive fiction. Let’s be clear here: Netflix developed this show for the primary purpose of gathering data on me. Clearly many of the decisions only existed to test the effectiveness of product placement. Some other decisions were intended to cluster subscribers into segments. My issue is that I was deceived into thinking the interactivity was purely to enhance the story.
  - gjs278 8y ago
    get your schizophrenia checked out

clearing 8y ago

I haven't seen this, but as someone who's had DPDR for the better half of a decade, I don't think this article frames it 100% properly (which, to be fair, is harder with this than, say, general anxiety). Yes, fear does come up during derealization experiences, but the difference is there's no grounded "you" experiencing this fear, more that the fear comes as "the experiencer" reconciling the reality one experiences with a new and disconcerting distance. This reads more like a profile of Pure-O OCD (they're comorbid so I got the two-for-one), where there is somewhat logical rumination about a specific fear. I've never really had a DPDR experience where I was questioning my own free will. To me the external world at the time is best described as seeming aggressively real to the point it seems false, objects indistinct from others, bereft of any intent or memory. You feel like you've lost some foundational understanding of the world that has been instilled in you forever.

fumar 8y ago
Asking for a friend, did you seek a professional diagnosis?
- clearing 8y ago
  I was seeing a CBT therapist for severe OCD at the time I was diagnosed with this. Unfortunately there isn’t really a specific therapy targeting DPDR like OCD, but anxiety reduction does help overall.
bonesmoses 8y ago
I had a very protracted DPDR experience start around when I was 12, and slowly dissipated over the course of a decade. I woke up one morning, and it was like I was slapped out of my body. It's like I was piloting a Me(ch) suit. I wasn't seeing through my eyes. They were transmitting, with perceivable lag and some kind of acknowledged overlay, their sensory data. It's like being embedded in _extremely advanced_ and nearly seamless VR, but also hyper aware of the "nearly" part. It's like the Uncanny Valley effect, but directing it toward your own sensory system. It doesn't feel quite real anymore, and you don't know why. So that's probably how I'd convey it. "You know the Uncanny Valley? Imagine everything you experienced felt that way." It's uniquely awful.

davebryand 8y ago

This is the state that most of us committing our lives to spiritual practice seek to achieve. All of these overlap with symptoms of Enlightenment, although the enlightened being has conscious control over all internal processes, so they are not only able to feel joy and love, they've reached the source of those emotions. * Detachment from self, feeling as though one is watching a movie about oneself. * A sense that one is not in control of one’s thoughts and actions. * Reality may seem dream-like or unreal. * Distorted sense of time. * Perceptual alterations like visual snow, halo around lights. * Emotional numbness, unable to feel joy or love.

Juliate 8y ago
For a very specific understanding of what "spiritual practice" means.
omnicognate 8y ago
There are lots of different ideas about enlightenment, but the one I'm most familiar with, Soto Zen, is the exact opposite of what is described there. If you're getting halos, feeling out of control and experiencing emotional numbness you're doing it (specifically Soto Zen) very, very wrong.
thinkharder 8y ago
The definitions of equanimity and disassociation sound really similar, but they are very different things. In Equanimity, you feel a connection to everything, with the sense of self and ego diminished or completely removed. In Disassociation, you feel disconnected from everything, floating free and completely alone. To be honest, I've never experienced equanimity, so I'm going off the descriptions I've read and had explained to me, in my own attempts at mindfulness meditation. Disassociation, I've experienced multiple times. It tends to happen when one is in an extremely stressful emotional state, and it's a big relief when it happens in that context, but it's a self-defense strategy, and not a healthy state. I suspect you could achieve it accidentally when trying for equanimity, but it isn't equanimity.
mindgam3 8y ago
What you are describing is getting high, not spiritual practice. Nothing wrong with getting high per se, but it can be extremely dangerous if you confuse those states with "Enlightenment". The experience of transcending one's ego identity may feel similar to dissociation or depersonalization at times. But the end result of awakening is not a dissociative state. It's being fully present to all of your emotions, not numbness at all, but simply not attached to them in the sense that they don't automatically dictate your response. You still feel all the things that apply to your normal sense of self, but you're able to observe them and act from a different place. There is a real risk to people getting lost on the spiritual path and ending up in places like nihilism or dissociation. Be careful.

danburbridge 8y ago

Interesting, the symptoms remind me a lot of many of the themes of Phillip K Dick's works, particularly the questioning of reality and consciousness.

roywiggins 8y ago
PKD had his own unusual experiences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick#Paranormal_experiences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick#Paranormal_expe...

randyrand 8y ago

Have DPDR, I appreciate that DPDR is becoming more talked about. Makes me feel less alone and less abnormal. Thankfully, I've slowly (~years) been returning to normal.

sergefaguet 8y ago

i feel a bit confused about this "disorder." i spend hundreds of hours a year meditating to get rid of my sense of self. it is the best thing about the LSD experience too. the idea that one is not in control of one's own actions is called "seeing the illusion of free will which is obvious to anyone who has ever seriously thought about the issue." the idea that you are watching a movie about something that does not actually have a self is called "ego death" or "enlightenment."

sergefaguet 8y ago
now i notice all the other comments here are about the same thing :)
parf02 8y ago
I experienced ego death on a very high dose of pot. I suffered from DP/DR for about three years after. It's not the same. In DP/DR, you feel completely disconnected from your body and "spirit". It's really not a pleasant feeling.
swamy_g 8y ago
The problem with DP/DR is that the loss of control/feeling of unrealness is not pleasant. It's the opposite. Your ego is not completely lost, it's still very much present. But it feels really threatened. You feel like you are on the edge most of the time. You feel like you might go insane or die any minute (when the intensity gets high). After years of getting my grounding, I feel like I can manage these feelings. I don't have them that often. But it takes practice, and you have to surrender when the feelings are overwhelming. For functioning in this world, you do need a sense of self. But it also helps when that self realizes that it is part of a whole. Without a self, I don't think you can operate in this reality, so there's no point trying to get rid of it.
- renholder 8y ago
  >You feel like you are on the edge most of the time. You feel like you might go insane or die any minute (when the intensity gets high). Mine's been far milder (thankfully) and the best way I could explain that feeling is like being a boat with it's anchor dropped. You're very much the anchor but, when you hit the DP/PR, you're also - very much - the boat, as well - being tossed about by the waves. It's like events happen but you're kind of pedestrian to them, seing them after-the-fact, almost[0]. That's the best way that I can describe it but I'm not even doing it justice, overall; just from my own anecdotal experience(s) and it's a piss-poor analogy at that. Sorry. [0] - https://media.giphy.com/media/UrO3di2UKs4qA/giphy.gif https://media.giphy.com/media/UrO3di2UKs4qA/giphy.gif

charliebrownau 8y ago

I would not be surprised if the future labels 2010-2025 as the REGRESSIVE ERA As society is losing morals, common sense and the ability to logically think on a massive level

mentos 8y ago

Random aside: Anyone else watch the Fyre Festival documentary on Netflix? I feel like that could be an interesting choose your own adventure similar to how Bandersnatch was done. Let people make decisions as if they were in charge of the festival and see if they could come out the end of it having made it a success or not.

sucrose 8y ago
Yes, I was so intrigued by their story. I feel like the right person could pull it off. I've thought about this documentary non-stop for the past couple of days.
- colemickens 8y ago
  > I feel like the right person could pull it off. I uh, I guess I'll bite. How? If anything, I think it's funny to imagine it as an interviewing exercise to suss out people with delusions of grandeur who have lived a life free of real-world consequences. They basically had a failed FEMA campsite without water or electricity, or effectively, shelter. It absolutely blows my mind and shakes my understanding of humanity to think that people got sucked into that or that there would be folks lining up to get suckered again, or that people somehow think it was ever achievable based on the timeline and current human time-travel technology. While I understand Billy's "charm" and even how to use it at times, it's amazing how enough of it will convince people to believe absolutely any delusional fantasy. Partying with a bunch of Insta influencers glued to their phone sounds like hell, anyway. Who doesn't want to hang out with the grown adult proudly bragging about urinating on all of the bedding?
  - mentos 8y ago
    I think maybe a timeline where they listened to the guy suggesting they use a cruise ship to transport people might be 1 correct choice. After that they said they chose between 10 venues, maybe there is a timeline where they could have done something on the main land (Nassau) and crowd sourced more appropriate villas with AirBnB. Delaying the event by 1 week to avoid the yachting event might have brought airbnb prices down to a reasonable threshold. Maybe secretly there is no actual successful decision tree and its just a dark reminder that some things are never meant to be. Maybe at the start there is an option 'refund everyones money' haha and thats the only positive outcome.

md224 8y ago

If one is having a panic attack regarding free will, it might be helpful to remember that if you're able to speak the words "I have no control", then you've proven yourself wrong: you just exerted control over your vocal chords. Helpful reminder that you're not a prisoner in your own body!

jjnoakes 8y ago
Unless whomever is controlling you made you say that so you'd think you were free...
- md224 8y ago
  True, but then they'd need to be reading your mind to know that you were thinking about it. The plot thickens... Also, if this controller needs to do external things to influence what you think about, rather than just controlling your thoughts directly, then there's already a hint of free will in the choice of your thoughts.
nnd 8y ago
Volition is not the same thing as free will.

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