6 ms·

A difficult case: Diagnosis made by hallucinatory voices (1997)

67 points by signa11 5y ago

leetrout 5y ago
PDF: http://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/1986100/7af16f44ed9af212b17baed7280ab8d6.pdf?1522719977 http://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/1986100/7af16f44ed...
reinkaos 5y ago
Ok so of all crackpots who have medical related hallucinations, one got it right. This is hardly newsworthy.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
yeetaccount 5y ago
Reminds me of Philip K Dick being told by a pink beam of light that his son was seriously ill and needed to go to the hospital right away. In one version of the story I heard, he told the doctor exactly what was wrong with him when there was realistically no way he could have known.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  He was also seriously convinced Stanislaw Lem is a team of communist agents, he didn't believe one person could ever produce that kind of content. So I'd take everything he says with more than a grain of salt.
  - dagw 5y ago
    That Stanislaw Lem was a pseudonym for a collective of authors seems to have been fairly common belief. My mother read his books in the 60s and 70s (in the US), and according to her it was 'well known' at the time that the books where written by several people writing under a single pseudonym.
  - pharke 5y ago
    He's also the godfather of the simulation hypothesis, make of that what you will. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkaQUZFbJjE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkaQUZFbJjE
    - tediousdemise 5y ago
      There are legitimate and recent experiments that have been done to test the simulation hypothesis. In my opinion, it's really not that far-fetched and the potential fact that we could be living in a simulated universe has no significant effect or consequences for humanity.
      - pharke 5y ago
        I suppose that depends on if we are in a "hands off" simulation or one that is being actively modified. It would also depend on the purpose of the simulation, the duration, the ethical views of the being(s) running the simulation. It seems to me that there is a lot more that can go wrong, so to speak, with a simulation than there is with base level reality. There are more things that can go right as well though, technically a simulation could implement an after life or reincarnation or have some means of exiting the simulation.
    - Bobylonian 5y ago
      If the Universe is cyclic and recreated again and again and has the same outcome(and appparently has no beginning and end), simulation hypothesis have problems to explain why things that follow exactly the same tracks again and again can't be part of Universe as natural mechanism observable by enough developed brains and why there is such necessity for someone to create something that is natural. It also concentrates on humans, but there is nothing that prevents animals - at least for mammals to "remember or guess future". Or even things to "remember" their place, that humans can observe. Anecdotally, but some of the issues, that are discussed in regards human behaviour, were already present in old folk tales, that discuss exactly the same issues, that simulation hypothesis have about human behavior, as in those old folk tales it was claimed that humans initially knew their fate and behaved accordingly without any regards for others when their end came, so they were robbed of that full understanding of what is their fate.
tediousdemise 5y ago
> A previously healthy woman began to hear hallucinatory voices telling her to have a brain scan for a tumour. The prediction was true; she was operated on and had an uneventful recovery. In some circles, phenomena like these are believed to be "spiritual energy downloads" from Source, which is a metaphor to explain an influx of knowledge from an unknown origin. They typically provide confirmations about your life path, predict something that will occur, or provide much-needed inspiration. They can occur while you are awake or, more commonly, while you are dreaming. They are sometimes accompanied by physical discomfort such as headaches or bodily aches and pains.
- costcopizza 5y ago
  Patiently awaiting the ever present "skeptics" to debunk this with "peer-reviewed" studies rather than just appreciate unique unexplainable things happening in our unique unexplainable world.
  - tediousdemise 5y ago
    Science is great, and I love science, but it paradoxically has a way of limiting our understanding. Things that the scientific method cannot be successfully applied to are immediately written off by such skeptics. The rejection of anything not deemed scientific is a close-minded approach to understanding the universe. Take a look at WIMPs[0] (weakly interacting massive particles) and a slew of other theorized forms of matter and energy that we are currently incapable of detecting. It may be the case that there are physical phenomena we will never be able to detect. Does that make them false? No, that is a logical fallacy. I think the prefix pseudo- is used as a pejorative by dogmatic disciples of science. If they applied the prefix pseudo- to everything not supported by direct observation (rather than just things of a spiritual or metaphysical nature), then theoretical physics would have been branded as pseudophysics a long time ago. Any crackpot can write down some equations that the scientific community will except as a substitute for direct observation, without applying the term pseudo-. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weakly_interacting_massive_particles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weakly_interacting_massive_par...
escanda 5y ago
Science just isn't there, yet. But yep, people talks.
mercora 5y ago
> “To help you see that we are sincere, we would like you to check out the following” really would like to know what this was about and what else the voices in her head told her, especially unrelated stuff. Also if she could talk to them and if so what it was like to have a conversation like that. i guess i am more on the X-phobes side on this one as i also suspect this woman knew about her tumor and came up with that story because she had to avoid telling the full truth for whatever reason and "this is the easiest way I could think of". However reading more about what happened with these voices while they were active would likely help me to trust her story more...
- saalweachter 5y ago
  The bah-humbug skeptic would have a number of points to question even without questioning the woman's veracity: 1. "As she arrived there, the voices told her to go in and ask to have a brain scan for two reasons—she had a tumour in her brain and her brain stem was inflamed." The article says they found a tumor; did they also find inflammation in the brain stem? 2. What was the media culture like during this era? Hallucinations are highly culturally informed; was there a pre-existing reason someone who was hallucinating would be disposed to hearing medical diagnoses? 3. How often does this happen? If only one person has ever hallucinated -- or otherwise predicted or pulled from thin air -- a medical diagnosis and that one instance was correct, that is one thing, but if thousands and thousands of people have heard a voice conveying a diagnosis, or cast the bones, or read the cards, and most of them are wrong, it makes it far more likely that one or two people would get it right by chance.
  - tediousdemise 5y ago
    The tumor could have bootstrapped the thought that she had the tumor, which led to the actual discovery of the tumor. It's biophysical recursion!
  - retrac 5y ago
    Regarding 3: "helpful" hallucinations are not that unusual. While most who hallucinate are tormented by demons, some hallucinate neutral observers and a few get a "guardian angel" who sometimes gives useful advice. The subconscious can definitely channel "you left the stove on" into a hallucination that commands the person to go turn off the stove. So transformation of awareness of ill-health into that sort of experience doesn't seem too preposterous.
theknocker 5y ago
Seriously Dan, stop letting people submit ads for fucking subscriptions to your shitty Reddit-wannabe "aggregator."
swayvil 5y ago
Once I was tripping. A very powerful marijuana cookie. I was walking in a field. A few friendly disembodied voices chattering at me, about my life and such. I call them "spirits". Terrible drymouth. Kept sipping from my canteen. It didn't help. One of the spirits said, "you have drymouth, not because you are dehydrated, but because you injested marijuana. Chew on a blade of grass and that'll fix it". So I plucked a blade of grass, put it in my mouth and chewed. That fixed the drymouth.
dorchadas 5y ago
Somewhat similar anecdote, but my uncle had an aneurysm and he swears to this day he saw his dead mother there telling him he didn't have time to call 911 or his wife and that she helped him drive to the hospital somehow and that was the only way he survived it.
squidproquo 5y ago
This article reminded me about a strange incident that happened to me a decade ago. I was with a group of friends in a bar playing a game of Trivial Pursuit. None of us were drunk or under the influence of drugs. Sometime, during the middle of the game, it was my turn to answer a question. The question was something like "What is the name of the city in Central America whose name translates to 'silver hills' in the native Nahuatl language?" I sat there dumbfounded, having no clue as to what the answer was. I was about to give up. But, before I could, I heard a voice in my head slowly whispering something. At first I couldn't make the words out, but as the voiced repeated itself, it became clearer. I blurted out: "Tegucigalpa!" The correct answer. My friends looked at me a little bit shocked wondering how I could have know that. The answer must have been buried deep in my mind somewhere, for it to come to me through a voice whispering the answer to me was strange an a little bit unnerving. Nothing like that has happened to me since.

67 points by signa11 5y ago

PDF: http://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/1986100/7af16f44ed9af212b17baed7280ab8d6.pdf?1522719977 http://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/1986100/7af16f44ed...

reinkaos 5y ago

Ok so of all crackpots who have medical related hallucinations, one got it right. This is hardly newsworthy.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

yeetaccount 5y ago

Reminds me of Philip K Dick being told by a pink beam of light that his son was seriously ill and needed to go to the hospital right away. In one version of the story I heard, he told the doctor exactly what was wrong with him when there was realistically no way he could have known.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
He was also seriously convinced Stanislaw Lem is a team of communist agents, he didn't believe one person could ever produce that kind of content. So I'd take everything he says with more than a grain of salt.
- dagw 5y ago
  That Stanislaw Lem was a pseudonym for a collective of authors seems to have been fairly common belief. My mother read his books in the 60s and 70s (in the US), and according to her it was 'well known' at the time that the books where written by several people writing under a single pseudonym.
- pharke 5y ago
  He's also the godfather of the simulation hypothesis, make of that what you will. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkaQUZFbJjE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkaQUZFbJjE
  - tediousdemise 5y ago
    There are legitimate and recent experiments that have been done to test the simulation hypothesis. In my opinion, it's really not that far-fetched and the potential fact that we could be living in a simulated universe has no significant effect or consequences for humanity.
    - pharke 5y ago
      I suppose that depends on if we are in a "hands off" simulation or one that is being actively modified. It would also depend on the purpose of the simulation, the duration, the ethical views of the being(s) running the simulation. It seems to me that there is a lot more that can go wrong, so to speak, with a simulation than there is with base level reality. There are more things that can go right as well though, technically a simulation could implement an after life or reincarnation or have some means of exiting the simulation.
  - Bobylonian 5y ago
    If the Universe is cyclic and recreated again and again and has the same outcome(and appparently has no beginning and end), simulation hypothesis have problems to explain why things that follow exactly the same tracks again and again can't be part of Universe as natural mechanism observable by enough developed brains and why there is such necessity for someone to create something that is natural. It also concentrates on humans, but there is nothing that prevents animals - at least for mammals to "remember or guess future". Or even things to "remember" their place, that humans can observe. Anecdotally, but some of the issues, that are discussed in regards human behaviour, were already present in old folk tales, that discuss exactly the same issues, that simulation hypothesis have about human behavior, as in those old folk tales it was claimed that humans initially knew their fate and behaved accordingly without any regards for others when their end came, so they were robbed of that full understanding of what is their fate.

tediousdemise 5y ago

> A previously healthy woman began to hear hallucinatory voices telling her to have a brain scan for a tumour. The prediction was true; she was operated on and had an uneventful recovery. In some circles, phenomena like these are believed to be "spiritual energy downloads" from Source, which is a metaphor to explain an influx of knowledge from an unknown origin. They typically provide confirmations about your life path, predict something that will occur, or provide much-needed inspiration. They can occur while you are awake or, more commonly, while you are dreaming. They are sometimes accompanied by physical discomfort such as headaches or bodily aches and pains.

costcopizza 5y ago
Patiently awaiting the ever present "skeptics" to debunk this with "peer-reviewed" studies rather than just appreciate unique unexplainable things happening in our unique unexplainable world.
- tediousdemise 5y ago
  Science is great, and I love science, but it paradoxically has a way of limiting our understanding. Things that the scientific method cannot be successfully applied to are immediately written off by such skeptics. The rejection of anything not deemed scientific is a close-minded approach to understanding the universe. Take a look at WIMPs[0] (weakly interacting massive particles) and a slew of other theorized forms of matter and energy that we are currently incapable of detecting. It may be the case that there are physical phenomena we will never be able to detect. Does that make them false? No, that is a logical fallacy. I think the prefix pseudo- is used as a pejorative by dogmatic disciples of science. If they applied the prefix pseudo- to everything not supported by direct observation (rather than just things of a spiritual or metaphysical nature), then theoretical physics would have been branded as pseudophysics a long time ago. Any crackpot can write down some equations that the scientific community will except as a substitute for direct observation, without applying the term pseudo-. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weakly_interacting_massive_particles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weakly_interacting_massive_par...

escanda 5y ago

Science just isn't there, yet. But yep, people talks.

mercora 5y ago

> “To help you see that we are sincere, we would like you to check out the following” really would like to know what this was about and what else the voices in her head told her, especially unrelated stuff. Also if she could talk to them and if so what it was like to have a conversation like that. i guess i am more on the X-phobes side on this one as i also suspect this woman knew about her tumor and came up with that story because she had to avoid telling the full truth for whatever reason and "this is the easiest way I could think of". However reading more about what happened with these voices while they were active would likely help me to trust her story more...

saalweachter 5y ago
The bah-humbug skeptic would have a number of points to question even without questioning the woman's veracity: 1. "As she arrived there, the voices told her to go in and ask to have a brain scan for two reasons—she had a tumour in her brain and her brain stem was inflamed." The article says they found a tumor; did they also find inflammation in the brain stem? 2. What was the media culture like during this era? Hallucinations are highly culturally informed; was there a pre-existing reason someone who was hallucinating would be disposed to hearing medical diagnoses? 3. How often does this happen? If only one person has ever hallucinated -- or otherwise predicted or pulled from thin air -- a medical diagnosis and that one instance was correct, that is one thing, but if thousands and thousands of people have heard a voice conveying a diagnosis, or cast the bones, or read the cards, and most of them are wrong, it makes it far more likely that one or two people would get it right by chance.
- tediousdemise 5y ago
  The tumor could have bootstrapped the thought that she had the tumor, which led to the actual discovery of the tumor. It's biophysical recursion!
- retrac 5y ago
  Regarding 3: "helpful" hallucinations are not that unusual. While most who hallucinate are tormented by demons, some hallucinate neutral observers and a few get a "guardian angel" who sometimes gives useful advice. The subconscious can definitely channel "you left the stove on" into a hallucination that commands the person to go turn off the stove. So transformation of awareness of ill-health into that sort of experience doesn't seem too preposterous.

theknocker 5y ago

Seriously Dan, stop letting people submit ads for fucking subscriptions to your shitty Reddit-wannabe "aggregator."

swayvil 5y ago

Once I was tripping. A very powerful marijuana cookie. I was walking in a field. A few friendly disembodied voices chattering at me, about my life and such. I call them "spirits". Terrible drymouth. Kept sipping from my canteen. It didn't help. One of the spirits said, "you have drymouth, not because you are dehydrated, but because you injested marijuana. Chew on a blade of grass and that'll fix it". So I plucked a blade of grass, put it in my mouth and chewed. That fixed the drymouth.

dorchadas 5y ago

Somewhat similar anecdote, but my uncle had an aneurysm and he swears to this day he saw his dead mother there telling him he didn't have time to call 911 or his wife and that she helped him drive to the hospital somehow and that was the only way he survived it.

squidproquo 5y ago

This article reminded me about a strange incident that happened to me a decade ago. I was with a group of friends in a bar playing a game of Trivial Pursuit. None of us were drunk or under the influence of drugs. Sometime, during the middle of the game, it was my turn to answer a question. The question was something like "What is the name of the city in Central America whose name translates to 'silver hills' in the native Nahuatl language?" I sat there dumbfounded, having no clue as to what the answer was. I was about to give up. But, before I could, I heard a voice in my head slowly whispering something. At first I couldn't make the words out, but as the voiced repeated itself, it became clearer. I blurted out: "Tegucigalpa!" The correct answer. My friends looked at me a little bit shocked wondering how I could have know that. The answer must have been buried deep in my mind somewhere, for it to come to me through a voice whispering the answer to me was strange an a little bit unnerving. Nothing like that has happened to me since.