15 ms·

This is almost exactly what happened to me in 2022 and led to the authoring of my paper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39569747 https://news.ycombinator

This is almost exactly what happened to me in 2022 and led to the authoring of my paper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39569747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39569747 I had been having months of focal (non-tonic clonic yet) seizures that I thought were panic attacks for about 5 months I had a massive psychiatric event in Dec 2022 and started writing that paper I was in the bath tub the same night and saw a hallucinated blue orb for lack of better term that “felt” like it was trying to communicate that the paper was good So very interesting! The brain is crazy and I have spent a lot of time studying it and it never ceases to amaze. Oh and I forgot, my art style got really honed in and I was more prolific in 6 months than I had been in years, leading to my first art show in 15ish years: https://www.instagram.com/p/CzC8HoZOApQ/?igsh=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng== https://www.instagram.com/p/CzC8HoZOApQ/?igsh=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng...

user_7832 3y ago
Have you written about your experience or contacted any researchers? I'd assume some scientist somewhere would love to know more.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  I haven’t cause I don’t really think there’s anything there other than artifacts of brain activity.
  - sandspar 3y ago
    The machine elves desperately trying to contact humanity: "That's it, no more revealing ourselves to rational people. We need to go back to concentrating on the hippies."
zikzak 3y ago
Contact with mysterious phenomenon that seems to communicate with the witness is not unheard of and many people seem to undergo an intelligence boost afterwards, even if short lived. This is often considered a religious experience while more secular minded people might attribute it to something like a ufo experience.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  I recognize that. However my perspective is that it was 100% in my head and I’m not unique or special or chosen or whatever nonsense fallacies that typically come with these experiences Not some exogenous event or mystical miracle or whatever it was just pure chemistry and electricity.
  - zikzak 3y ago
    I am definitely not saying any of those interpretations of the event are correct (I'm a skeptic) but I do find it interesting that some people do seem to have a period of increased focus and productivity afterwards.
  - sandspar 3y ago
    > I know it was in my head This awareness is technically called "insight", as in "insight into the weirdness of your beliefs". Generally, people suffering from psychosis don't have insight. They genuinely believe they're experiencing real things. So in this way at least it seems like you're healthy. That being said, there's a wide range of psychotic episodes, and feelings of uniqueness, specialness, or being chosen aren't always present.
- slibhb 3y ago
  Sounds like a manic episode. Symptoms include extreme grandiosity and hallucinations. Often a manic person will believe he is God, is in contact with God, or has a special part to play in history.
  - grugagag 3y ago
    Although it sounds somewhat similar to manic episodes keep in mind that they come with a depressive crash afterwards. The brain is more complex than a mere mental condition which we still don’t fully understand.
    - nick7376182 3y ago
      Not always. Unipolar mania used to be in previous revisions of the DSM and bipolar type 1 can exhibit as mania without intervening depression.
bane 3y ago
This scenario is mostly the plot of the movie Phenomenon. It doesn't end well for the main character (played by John Travolta) so you might want to get checked out. Maybe more boring, when trying to create I find I spend lots of time in a miserable morass where I feel like my "normal" brain is trying to solve creativity like it's a hard procedural problem, and progress is slow and the result is always uninspired. If I keep at it I eventually "punch through" and it's like an avalanche of sudden ideas and mental connections flow through and out of me and I get into a zone of unreal hyper productivity for a while. Later on when reviewing what I did during those moments while in a normal brain state, I find I can't replicate, edit, or really do much to alter what I created until I can punch through again -- I have basically no ability to replicate what I just made. The level of detail, the inspiration, the raw creativity is just not my normal mode. It's just not on tap. It also leaves me really hungry after a couple hours of doing it. I suspect there's some kind of interesting energy recruitment my body is doing in my brain, sensing it's working hard, and trying to support the emergency with sugars, or oxygen or something.
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  Huh. The closest (extremely weak version) of this with me is I'll try to remember something and fail to. Then, hours or even days later, the answer will pop into my head out of nowhere, as if my brain ran a background search daemon which finally returned the answer.
  - bane 3y ago
    ha! I get that sometimes too. I suspect it's fairly common which manifests in people having great ideas in the shower or somewhere similar when their attention isn't focused.
    - smackeyacky 3y ago
      It’s something you can train yourself to get better at. At least in my experience: 1. Get a tough problem 2. Read all the surrounding information about it. If a solution doesn’t appear then it’s distraction time 3. Go do something completely unrelated for a while. I like to tinker with something mechanical but listening to music or doing exercise both work. Anything where you can get a decent flow going works for me. Quite often just after I have finished with the distraction I get a good idea about the original problem. It used to be about 50/50 whether this would work for me but it’s now around 80/20. Like anything it takes practice and you need to find the right distraction for you
shrimp_emoji 3y ago
It said the paper you hadn't written yet would be good? Or it said it in a sense of encouragement to go through with or publish it? My interpretation is it was a Culture drone trying to influence you to influence humanity into joining the fold by returning to traditional human social structures of community, cooperation & sharing.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  Basically what I felt was that draft 1 was on the right track - which had the core of my argument What I have linked is draft 3 I expect that I’ll have a proper falsifiable theory on paper by the end of the year (Is my hope) My best guess based on what I know of the brain is that there was likely some amplified activation of memories linked to a heavy period of intentional visualizing (I’m a very visual thinker) cascading around my visual cortex as I was in a resting state
SilasX 3y ago
So you consider it a flash of genius because it led you to produce a paper that trivializes the relevance of scarcity (to greatly simplify)? Without commenting on the merit of the thesis, people get flashes of insight all the time that seem totally genius to them. Regardless of what you wrote, I would wait until it's actually validated by further scientific consensus before calling that any kind of vindication of the phenomenon of sudden genius. And your other example is that ... you produced art? As in, the famously capricious, easily duped community? That may not be the slam dunk you think it is. With that said, you definitely were productive in some sense, and I don't mean to trivialize that in anyway -- it's certainly more than I accomplished over the same time! It's just ... "genius" is a stretch. By the same token, I could claim I unconvered something major with my "fish would be bad swimming instructors" idea: http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2023/05/chatgpt4-refines-my-argument-about-fish.html http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2023/05/chatgpt4-refines-m...

user_7832 3y ago

Have you written about your experience or contacted any researchers? I'd assume some scientist somewhere would love to know more.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
I haven’t cause I don’t really think there’s anything there other than artifacts of brain activity.
- sandspar 3y ago
  The machine elves desperately trying to contact humanity: "That's it, no more revealing ourselves to rational people. We need to go back to concentrating on the hippies."

zikzak 3y ago

Contact with mysterious phenomenon that seems to communicate with the witness is not unheard of and many people seem to undergo an intelligence boost afterwards, even if short lived. This is often considered a religious experience while more secular minded people might attribute it to something like a ufo experience.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
I recognize that. However my perspective is that it was 100% in my head and I’m not unique or special or chosen or whatever nonsense fallacies that typically come with these experiences Not some exogenous event or mystical miracle or whatever it was just pure chemistry and electricity.
- zikzak 3y ago
  I am definitely not saying any of those interpretations of the event are correct (I'm a skeptic) but I do find it interesting that some people do seem to have a period of increased focus and productivity afterwards.
- sandspar 3y ago
  > I know it was in my head This awareness is technically called "insight", as in "insight into the weirdness of your beliefs". Generally, people suffering from psychosis don't have insight. They genuinely believe they're experiencing real things. So in this way at least it seems like you're healthy. That being said, there's a wide range of psychotic episodes, and feelings of uniqueness, specialness, or being chosen aren't always present.
slibhb 3y ago
Sounds like a manic episode. Symptoms include extreme grandiosity and hallucinations. Often a manic person will believe he is God, is in contact with God, or has a special part to play in history.
- grugagag 3y ago
  Although it sounds somewhat similar to manic episodes keep in mind that they come with a depressive crash afterwards. The brain is more complex than a mere mental condition which we still don’t fully understand.
  - nick7376182 3y ago
    Not always. Unipolar mania used to be in previous revisions of the DSM and bipolar type 1 can exhibit as mania without intervening depression.

bane 3y ago

This scenario is mostly the plot of the movie Phenomenon. It doesn't end well for the main character (played by John Travolta) so you might want to get checked out. Maybe more boring, when trying to create I find I spend lots of time in a miserable morass where I feel like my "normal" brain is trying to solve creativity like it's a hard procedural problem, and progress is slow and the result is always uninspired. If I keep at it I eventually "punch through" and it's like an avalanche of sudden ideas and mental connections flow through and out of me and I get into a zone of unreal hyper productivity for a while. Later on when reviewing what I did during those moments while in a normal brain state, I find I can't replicate, edit, or really do much to alter what I created until I can punch through again -- I have basically no ability to replicate what I just made. The level of detail, the inspiration, the raw creativity is just not my normal mode. It's just not on tap. It also leaves me really hungry after a couple hours of doing it. I suspect there's some kind of interesting energy recruitment my body is doing in my brain, sensing it's working hard, and trying to support the emergency with sugars, or oxygen or something.

shrimp_emoji 3y ago
Huh. The closest (extremely weak version) of this with me is I'll try to remember something and fail to. Then, hours or even days later, the answer will pop into my head out of nowhere, as if my brain ran a background search daemon which finally returned the answer.
- bane 3y ago
  ha! I get that sometimes too. I suspect it's fairly common which manifests in people having great ideas in the shower or somewhere similar when their attention isn't focused.
  - smackeyacky 3y ago
    It’s something you can train yourself to get better at. At least in my experience: 1. Get a tough problem 2. Read all the surrounding information about it. If a solution doesn’t appear then it’s distraction time 3. Go do something completely unrelated for a while. I like to tinker with something mechanical but listening to music or doing exercise both work. Anything where you can get a decent flow going works for me. Quite often just after I have finished with the distraction I get a good idea about the original problem. It used to be about 50/50 whether this would work for me but it’s now around 80/20. Like anything it takes practice and you need to find the right distraction for you

shrimp_emoji 3y ago

It said the paper you hadn't written yet would be good? Or it said it in a sense of encouragement to go through with or publish it? My interpretation is it was a Culture drone trying to influence you to influence humanity into joining the fold by returning to traditional human social structures of community, cooperation & sharing.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
Basically what I felt was that draft 1 was on the right track - which had the core of my argument What I have linked is draft 3 I expect that I’ll have a proper falsifiable theory on paper by the end of the year (Is my hope) My best guess based on what I know of the brain is that there was likely some amplified activation of memories linked to a heavy period of intentional visualizing (I’m a very visual thinker) cascading around my visual cortex as I was in a resting state

SilasX 3y ago

So you consider it a flash of genius because it led you to produce a paper that trivializes the relevance of scarcity (to greatly simplify)? Without commenting on the merit of the thesis, people get flashes of insight all the time that seem totally genius to them. Regardless of what you wrote, I would wait until it's actually validated by further scientific consensus before calling that any kind of vindication of the phenomenon of sudden genius. And your other example is that ... you produced art? As in, the famously capricious, easily duped community? That may not be the slam dunk you think it is. With that said, you definitely were productive in some sense, and I don't mean to trivialize that in anyway -- it's certainly more than I accomplished over the same time! It's just ... "genius" is a stretch. By the same token, I could claim I unconvered something major with my "fish would be bad swimming instructors" idea: http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2023/05/chatgpt4-refines-my-argument-about-fish.html http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2023/05/chatgpt4-refines-m...