People Who Hear Voices Could Be on to Something | Hacker News Reader

People Who Hear Voices Could Be on to Something

theatlantic.com

57 pointspmcpinto105 comments

Watching Anderson Cooper try a schizophrenia simulator is one of the most stress-inducing things I've ever seen. I'll occasionally hear a voice here and there (I guess this is somewhat common?), but am able to normally brush it off. I couldn't imagine living daily with this much noise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL9UJVtgPZY

One thing of note, found in the YouTube comments, that this example is pretty generic voices, and instead for someone suffering with schizophrenia, imagine having the voice be very specific about the individual, attacking known issues ("Your parents don't love you!" "You're so stupid and everyone thinks you're a failure!"). I can't imagine that level of suffering...

That was remarkably well done. Actually a great use of a celebrity reporter! thanks for sharing it.

But there is always a voice talking in our heads. It's just that we generally ascribe it to our own consciousness but when you really sit down and think about it, it's a bit creepy when you realise that you don't actually know where it's coming from and what is prompting it to say what it is saying.

You should try meditation. Effectively you 'stop' listening to the voice and then things all go a bit crazy. The voice talks to itself, memories become really vivid, hallucinations can happen too. And all while you just observe what is going on. Can be quite fun.

Are you serious? Sounds almost like a dream state.

I've "meditated" with breathing control somewhat superficially for a few minutes at a time, but never experienced anything like that.

Any guides to this kind of meditation?

Do it everyday when you lie down to sleep. I don't set a timer and usually do it until at least my mind is calm (results in better sleep). I listen to my heartbeat in my veins in my forehead instead of breathe, which sounds harder than it is. Also at the beginning of the session it can be difficult to 'relax', so don't even try just wholly focus on listening to the heartbeat even if you need to tense, scrunch up face etc. Then as you get more into it you will relax naturally and fully.

Hard part after that is drifting off into memories, which takes experience to lessen that. Effectively you get better at observation, which leaves the unconscious free to do as it likes and it can get up to all kinds of weird stuff. I've observed it playing a racing game and controlling the car and overtaking other cars. Or sometimes it'll jump me into a lucid dream state, (where you know you are dreaming). You are never quite sure what it'll do.

Thank you. I usually do a breathing control thing to relax as I am falling asleep, so this should be a straightforward switch.

During the time when you drift from relaxed focus to memories -- try to just keep focusing on the heartbeat for a longer period of time instead?

Yes maintain focus on heartbeat, breathe, whatever works for you. If you drift off, just return back to your focus as soon as you notice.

the observer & the observee.

the opposite seems more true, no? you're turning out the observee, not the observer ("the voice"). the voice takes over.

I can confirm this. I wasn't able to get into meditation on my own, and so I took the more extreme route and visited a dedicated 10 day Vipassana mediation course.

The effects were incredible and lasted for quite some time even after the course. It's hard to explain, but they teach you to be more empathetic and to listen to the "vibrations" in your body. Once the course was over and I was back in the real world my body was vibrating (not visibly of course) like crazy when I was interacting with other people, simply due to my happiness and love for everything, everyone and the whole universe. I know this sounds like some crazy new age foo, but it's really not.

All in all this was one of the hardest, but also best experiences in my life. Unfortunately once I got back home, daily life and stress took over and I stopped meditating. But I plan to visit another course again as soon as I can, and then I will try to stick with regular mediation. I can highly recommend this.

When I was younger I used to be able to separate the sensation of what my hands were feeling from the location of my hands or the material they were actually feeling. Mainly on fabric.

I guess the best way to describe it -- it's as if the surface of my palm was like a hundred fingertips rather than a single palm. When the sensation first happened it freaked me out. I didn't know what was going on and couldn't stop it because it was just scary. Then for a while I could flip it on and off like a switch.

Every once in a while that state of interpreting sensation from my hand will switch on randomly as I am falling asleep. I wonder if this is related to this type of meditation or a tactile rather than auditory sensory hallucination.

I can't really answer your question, I'm no expert in this field, but I can tell you that I did experiment with lucid dreaming/out of body experience techniques in the past and this usually involved the strangest body sensations. So what you describe may be similar.

I never really succeeded, but I had a few, very short OOBEs. They only lasted a few seconds because I always got too excited the moment I realized it finally happened, and so I immediately woke up.

When you say this happens randomly when you are falling asleep, then this sounds to me a bit like the start of an OOBE.

Here is what I did and felt when I tried to experience an OOBE: lay down comfortably and try to let your body fall asleep. Take deep breaths, observe your body and look out for certain sensations, try to focus on the here and now so that the mind stays awake. Most of the time I just fell asleep and woke up in the morning, without remembering anything.

But if you stay focused enough, you may start to feel and hear some kind of vibrations in your body, which may intensify if you stay focused. This phase is usually referred to as the "separation of the mind from the body". Once the vibrations are over, and you stay focused, you may start to get the feeling of "floating" and other strange body sensations. Sometimes it felt like my feet started to float, then my legs, and finally my whole body. If you are really good at this then you can try to "open" your eyes and look around. It may be really dark at first, but with enough focus you can literally say "let there be light".

I was only once at this stage, my body started to float, and I "opened" my eyes after a while when I suddenly "saw" the ceiling right in front of my face. I got so excited that I immediately got "sucked" back into my body, and then I woke up.

Nothing really happens in the physical world, an observer will see you falling asleep, but the whole experience always feels so damn real, the beginning is almost always the same and many people can confirm this. It's incredible and fascinating. Unfortunately I never got really good at this and I lost motivation. I was around 17-18 back then and seeking for the meaning of life.

Another fascinating part is that there is no real scientific explanation for this phenomenon. Of course it's usually labeled as some kind of dream state, or just a chemical reaction in our brains.

It depends on who you ask, but for some people this is esoteric nonsense and just simple dreams, for others this is the gateway to a another reality/dimension/quantum world. Personally I have no idea and never figured it out, and I don't care anymore. I got older and I have other problems now, like paying my bills. But it's still fascinating stuff and I like to think back about it every now and then. The internet is full of information and reports about this topic, some serious, some less serious.

Anyway, thanks for making me remember about all of this, after a very long time. It was a fun experience.

> there is no real scientific explanation for this phenomenon. Of course it's usually labeled as some kind of dream state, or just a chemical reaction in our brains.

Which... is actually most likely. A couple of times I've fallen asleep and still had knowledge of my surroundings -- I could tell what was a dream and what wasn't, and feel when my limbs were getting numb (Normally in sleep you'd move them, but I had to move them in this state. I also wasn't very happy to because that just wrests you out of the experience), but also feel when I stopped breathing (And spend a couple of minutes wresting myself awake in terror...).

What would make that explanation a 'real' explanation, exactly? If it is an actual out of body experience, what evidence would you expect from that? The most science will be able to tell us -- at best -- is that they noticed a change in so and so part of the brain or that our brainwaves go a little fuzzy, and oh, when we stimulate such and such part of the brain with a small electrical current we can duplicate the exact process.

To which people would just say that, while that is interesting and all, the ability to provoke it with electricity doesn't prove that it isn't an actual out of body experience (Of course, if we can do that, we can check for parity between what the subject experienced and what was actually happening -- but this will probably be met with limited success because they will probably ignore the fact that the brain can hear the surroundings...)

Like I said, I really don't expect to find the "true" answer to all this. My point was basically that our current scientific knowledge may not be able to explain everything. We can observe the brain and see what's happening, but the brain and the mind is still a big mystery in science (as far as I know, it's been so many years when I read about this stuff).

And I believe you immediately, without checking first, when you say that electricity can provoke such experience. In my youth I was also interested in brain wave states and how to "manipulate" them with binaural beats, for example. So it seems plausible to me that electricity can provoke a change in the current brain wave state, and thus induce OOBE like experiences. I think there was even a Kickstarter campaign or something for a device which was supposed to aid in experiencing lucid dreams. It also worked by inducing some electricity, as far as I remember.

This is not the norm for meditation. Although sensory hallucinations can occur, most Buddhists encourage the practitioner to ignore them.

They are seen as a sign of meditative intensity, but a potentially-disturbing distraction from the goal of clear insight into the nature of self and reality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makyo

That's hypnogogia, not meditation. You started to fall asleep.

I talk to myself in my brain, but I don't really hear a voice. It's my "cadence", but it doesn't register as sound to me.

I often think of something in a way that is not a voice but more a compressed idea, then a subsecond later my inner monologue says this to me and as it's doing it I think "you are wasting your time inner monologue I know what you are going to say" yet never manage to suppress it before it is done. I hope that does not sound too mad.

I have the same feeling, it makes me feel better to know I'm not alone in madness ;)

I have a reminiscence of a time when that did not occur, when I was a small child ideas would not be followed by the inner monologue. I guess that's a trade off : verbalising ideas help to flesh them out and detect inconsistencies but it comes at a price of inefficiency.

Yes I think as a child I was more instinctive, the wall between my subconscious and conscious was more permeable. Now everything has to be handed to the go-between that is my monologue and into the conscious.

This is why I love playing soccer. You just allow your brain to express its ideas physically, there is no time for intermediation.

Are either or both of you multi-lingual?

I'm learning french but experienced this before then.

the other price is creativity. some ideas don't translate well- or can't translate to English. when logic and language becomes your core cognitive filtering mechanism, you start filtering "nonsense", as defined within the formal constraints of logic and language.

You raise a fascinating subject, but a distinction needs to be made between auditory hallucinations and inner dialogue. They may be interconnected concepts, but the manifestation is very different.

Here’s a related experiment:

Try counting without “talking.” That is, without saying the numbers in your head.

Try tapping on the desk or your lap an arbitrary number of times without going “1, 2, 3..” and see if you can still know how many times you tapped.

——

Follow-up question: Is language necessary for thought?

Try forming thoughts without forming any words in your head.

You might notice that there’s a much faster “higher priority process” in the head that already “knows” what to say before you “hear” the words of that thought forming in your head..

But there WILL be words. It may seem almost impossible to suppress the formation of words while thinking.

Do “feral children” that grow up without any human contact have the ability to “think?”

——

Also, during inner monologues or what have you, do you refer to yourself in the singular or plural?

e.g., do you go “I should [do that]” or “We should [do that]?”

Your last question intrigues me. I say "I." I'm curious whether other people use "we"

I’ve always said “we”, since I was a child, and assumed it was normal.. :)

I've heard "you" before as well. As in, "you should go talk to that person before they leave," for example.

Just in case it's interesting to anyone:

As far as I can tell, the internal 'talking' I do when counting in my head (I was unable to disable it, though I could tap numbers on my fingers without talking just fine) is like a 'test activation' of my speech muscles. The same way you can.. Imagine moving an arm, say, and it feels like it involves a communication with the muscles in your arm but they don't actually fire. Counting feels like it's imagining activating the muscles to say the words for the numbers, without actually doing it.

> Follow-up question: Is language necessary for thought? Try forming thoughts without forming any words in your head.

For three years at University, I studied American sign language (ASL). It changed how I thought.

There's a spectrum of how people sign, from straight transliteration of English words to signs, to the other 'pure' side where ASL has a very different grammar and way of communicating. The school I went to taught the 'pure ASL' side, figuring we already know English grammar.

When signing, my internal voice was much quieter, or if I did hear it, it was using far fewer words and more ideas. Thinking felt different to me.

After I graduated, I moved cities and have rarely needed to sign much since then. But I still sometimes dream in it, strange as that sounds.

I don't hear a voice in my head nor do I really have the sort of internal monologue or dialogue that many people describe here. My thoughts are much more spatial, for lack of a better word. A sense of expanse and topology, neither visual nor aural. I have to go through a step of composition to put thoughts into words, whether writing or speaking.

I've had close contact with a paranoid schizophrenic relative, and from what I can tell they really experience intrusive "other" thoughts and perceptions. It's not always a voice talking in their head or over their shoulder, but sometimes a sense that ideas or beliefs have intruded from elsewhere with no clear sense of arrival or beginning. Like a glitch in the matrix.

Same here but how do we know when we suddenly think of something (sometimes like total random recall or random idea) that it is not just a healthy version of the voices that folks with mental illness hear? Maybe mental illness in this context is just them associating a voice with what would otherwise be silent (potentially self-intrusive) thoughts?

I rarely, if ever, hear voices in my head that I don't will myself to have, like when I'm considering the phrasing of this sentence.

Although, I am always very puzzled when I think about my speech, especially in conversation, and how the phrasing of words get put in order so quickly, almost unconsciously.

The contrast is explicitly between thoughts that feel internal and guided versus those that feel intrusive and uncontrollable.

edit: personally, the fact that I don't have an intimate understanding of how my nervous system works doesn't make it creepier than anything else that exists.

One thing that never bothered me much was those intuitive insights or logical leaps thay seemingly come out of nowhere. That is until I read a comment about speculation that ancient cultures viewed it as coming from an external (mystical) source and then I realized just how little conscious thought goes into many of those thoughts. It's kind of unsettling that there's so much going on that's "separate" from our conscious minds. If those thoughts were even a little screwy or misaligned it would be a nightmare.

I've trained myself how to do this. Sure, call them psychics. I usually attribute them as having an innate ability to do this.

As for me, there are schools of magic that teach how to develop this. I didn't believe at first, but with enough "coincidences", I accepted it tentatively.

I still seek for a way to harmonize this with science proper. But most people are too caustic and closed-off to even give this a consideration.

There are really 2 options:

1. Everything is purely physical. When you die, you are worm food, the end. Many people 'believe' this, given no proof of either way.

2. The other option is that there is some unknown type of "energy" (boy, do I hate that word, BTW). And our bodies are some sort of receiver. Some times, we can receive other stuff. It would also explain out of body experiences, dreams that feel like more, feeling people watching you, near-death experiences, parents being able to sense when their child's hurt at a distance, and other things. How does this work? No bloody clue.

If everything's simply physical, then who cares? You're worm food anyways. The second offers much more - some people can communicate with it. So, how does it work? How can I receive it, say, from a computer receiver? How do I transmit? How do I view it?

But hostiles will be hostiles, well, until we start seeing more "Science of Consciousness" work. Then finally, we can bring the Occult and Psychism to science proper.

------------------------------

(EDIT: Wow, again, another mod-storm. It seems the staunch atheists and antitheists are going at this thread with a vengeance.

I'm only highlighting 'interesting' phenomenon, for a possibility others might find something interesting and share their findings. You know, it's kind of how science works. Well, unless it's an echo-chamber filled with sycophants repeating their own religious dictates that 'the occult and psychism doesnt exist'. I know the path I understand it, but it is unprovable to others. Tl;Dr: study of N=1.

I'll wait for you deniers to explain consciousness. I'll be waiting.)

And that's what we call Religion.

Really? Looking for science given enough anecdotes is now "religion"? I spoke of no deities, no dictates, no 'holy orders'. But you know, I'm sure that everything has been invented and there is nothing new...

How fitting, given someone naming themselves after Norse deity Odin's raven Muninn, meaning 'Mind'.

Religion is control of the masses. Spirituality is exploration of the spirit.

> 1. Everything is purely physical. When you die, you are worm food, the end. Many people 'believe' this, given no proof of either way.

Other than it's the only thing we have evidence for. You know... that. It's quite rational to 'believe' something when all evidence we have points to it. The reverse is not true.

Which brings me to...

> The other option is that there is some unknown type of "energy" (boy, do I hate that word, BTW). And our bodies are some sort of receiver.

Ok, so test this. If it exists and has an effect it should be measurable. Guess what's good at measuring stuff? Science. So go get that Nobel or something - help design a test and study for it!

OoBE, lucid dreams, and NDE's all have very normal non "energy" explanations when you dive into anything more than a superficial level (and they are fascinating! It's a really cool area of science!)

> The second offers much more

Yes, empty promises with no proof are generally considered to offer plenty but unless you can show me actual evidence then it's just more snake oil.

The absence of evidence is not a proof, in either direction.

If someone believes something without evidence, and you do not believe it because of the lack of evidence, then you are both guilty of the same thing.

If you flip a coin, and it lands out of sight, someone may choose to believe it is heads, and you may choose to believe it is tails. Both are choosing to believe something without evidence.

But the burden of proof lies on the side making the extraordinary claim. In the case of flipping coins, there is no extraordinary claim, but there sure is in the case of psychic energy or whatnot.

That's BS. Whether a claim is extraordinary or not is opinion.

Not all opinions are born equal. This is similar to the dodgy assertion of "but it's just a theory!" -- especially when it's a theory for which there is reasonable evidence. There is no reasonable evidence for psychic energy, hence it's an extraordinary claim.

Oh, but you're the arbiter of the equality of opinions and theories?

And I thought I was arrogant.

Of course I'm not the arbiter, but there is a consensus (based on what works and is repeatable and doesn't require simply trusting based on faith) of what consists of reasonable evidence for a phenomenon. There are some gray areas, but psychic energy falls decidedly in the "extraordinary claims with a lack of evidence" camp.

I think "extraordinary" should be replaced with not common knowledge, "earth is flat" is always repeated in some way regarding assumptions on reality, think quantum mechanics.

> The absence of evidence is not a proof, in either direction.

Not actually true! A common misconception. Absence of evidence when you'd expect to find it is actually extremely suggestive that a hypothesis is incorrect. It's key to the criterion of falsifiability.

> If someone believes something without evidence, and you do not believe it because of the lack of evidence, then you are both guilty of the same thing.

Also incorrect - the former is taking an unjustifiable position whereas the other is justifiable (and, in most cases, the null position).

Your coin example suggests you don't really grok this topic if you think it applies at all.

> Not actually true! A common misconception. Absence of evidence when you'd expect to find it is actually extremely suggestive that a hypothesis is incorrect. It's key to the criterion of falsifiability.

Ok, you got me. If you expect to find something and don't, it means your expectations were wrong, the experiment was bad, whatever. It proves nothing about the thing for which you have no evidence.

The coin example should clarify your apparent misreading of "If someone believes something without evidence, and you do not believe it because of the lack of evidence, then you are both guilty of the same thing."

Rephrasing: the statement "not believe it" means to "believe it to be false." It's a colloquialism. Both stances are choosing to believe something without evidence.

> It proves nothing about the thing for which you have no evidence.

It proves something, though by itself it doesn't actually disprove the phenomenon. Maybe your experiment was flawed; maybe you have to adjust an hypothesis. But when it becomes a combination of many flawed experiments, lack of actual experiments, a field dominated by charlatans who don't know and don't practice the scientific method, it starts to indicate something stronger about the alleged phenomenon itself, doesn't it?

By the way, people do not "believe" a flipped coin landed head or tails in the same way they believe in psychic energy. The equivocation of colloquial and precise terms isn't helpful here. If we're going to pretend we're considering psychic energy as an actual phenomenon, let's stick to precise terms.

>> The other option is that there is some unknown type of "energy" (boy, do I hate that word, BTW). And our bodies are some sort of receiver.

> Ok, so test this.

I heartily agree.

I'm approaching this from my own perspectives in working with the occult. For me, I personally know its true, however this stuff must absolutely be not only measurable, but quantifiable and comparable. That's the basis of science. That's the problem with this area, given that you are the only one in the study.

I've highlighted a few areas that seem interesting and possible to detect. I'm working with the basis that when psychics talk of energy, I'm assuming something within Strong/Weak/gravity/EM with regards to energy. EM is probably the easiest to construct sensors, given that Strong/Weak are extremely short range forces, and gravity sensors are... expensive.

The first area I've determined that shouldn't be as hard, is to construct a way to see an aura in a camera system. It's rather easy to train oneself to see it, occult speaking. But there are some significant difficulties in even this. (One difficulty: Some can see the aura of a jpeg of a person, but when the image is cropped significantly, the aura disappears. What's going on?)

I'm keeping an open mind about this, but also trying to incorporate science in quantifiable ways.

> I heartily agree.

Yay \o/ common ground!

> That's the problem with this area, given that you are the only one in the study.

If it's only true to you and not to others then it's a perceptual thing. Therefore subjective. This would tend to indicate it's not actually a real effect but a perceived one.

> The first area I've determined that shouldn't be as hard, is to construct a way to see an aura in a camera system.

Well firstly you're going to have to:

  - define what an aura actually is.
  - prove auras even might exist.
  - prove auras are measurable.
  - find a system that can detect this form of energy.

and.. well... that's been the case for decades. No-one seems to have got much past step 1 because it all seems to fall apart then.

> and.. well... that's been the case for decades. No-one seems to have got much past step 1 because it all seems to fall apart then.

Agreed. And while there's nothing wrong with it (hey, it happens with actual science too!), what's infuriating is people claiming "let's be open-minded, if only we approached this in a scientific way, if only scientists (or skeptics, or whatever) gave us a chance!" as if the discussion was new and people had just started trying to do this. Pseudo-science has been going on for ages and they had their chance, with no success. It's not a new discussion, it's an old discussion occasionally re-framed in new terms.

sorry you're being downvoted. hypocritical, really.

i assume you are being downvoted because you are preaching faith: something you feel which is hard to quantify and prove.

I call this behavior hypocritical because I'm sure none of your naysayers would argue we don't dream- something we only know exists because we've shared our experiences with each other. if they want to deny we dream- well- at least they're consistent.

my plea: just because we cannot currently quantify something does not mean it's unscientific to discuss it.

> "I'll wait for you deniers to explain consciousness. I'll be waiting."

well said. I am tired of "we don't know so don't dare try discuss it." that kind of logic will hurt science more than it will help.

It's fairly easy to trick yourself into hearing voices: as you're going to sleep, picture yourself watching a newsreader. Keep watching them talk. Eventually your brain starts to switch to sleep mode and you actually start hearing something. (Well, you might fall asleep first.) If you're conscious enough it'll surprise the heck out of you and then the voice will go away.

Given how easy it is to pull this trick on yourself, I'm not entirely shocked that some people find it possible without conscious effort. But I think the content is rather like dreams: sometimes it's just nonsense, sometimes it's like that idea that comes to you in the shower, but always part of your brain processing your waking experiences.

How do you imagine the content the newsreader is supposed to read? Isn't it hard to produce random coherent content in your mind?

no. the mind, when at ease - when you truly do not try to think a particular thing - will do its own thing. just like when you're dreaming.

deep neural networks have no trouble producing random but coherent content, either.

I'm sorry, as a schizophrenic I'm calling bullshit on this one. Psychics? Seriously people? How about adequate treatment programs and access to affordable medication.

I agree,but isn't the article a good step towards educating the public about the nuances of these diseases? I think the spectrum is so broad, and maybe it will help the people with milder symptoms at it's tail end by making the society more receptive. I have a relative who is scheizophrenic and I can't stress how important it is to make people aware, and enable them to see from a compassionate angle. To me this article goes in the same direction as the remarkable article done years ago by Rachel Aviv [1] To me we need more like this. And also the article does mention how the researchers stress on proper diagnosis and treatment.

[1] http ://www.columbia.edu/cu/neuwrite/pubs/avivHarpers.pdf

Got busy, just got a chance to respond. I'm all about raising awareness and have experienced first hand the stigma of having a mental disorder like schizophrenia. It's not fun. The stigmatization or the condition. In fact, being schizophrenic is nothing short of extensional horror. Associating a metal disorder, like schizophrenia, with "psychics", I feel would only further stigmatize people with mental disorders and lessen the seriousness of the condition to the public. I would find it disheartening that someone would get the idea that talking to a psychic would somehow improve the condition of a person with a mental disorder. We need to raise awareness about these things but people need to be aware of the woeful lack the available treatment programs and the high cost of medication the prevents us from getting better, not that a "psychic" could somehow help in any way.

C-f Jaynes

Nothing.

Modern psychology needs to come to grips with The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. A trove of riches for anyone interested in practical psychology.

It's uh ... speculative to say the least. But it's a fantastic read.

Nice! Was going to leave this comment myself.

One of my thoughts as well. Also _hallucinations_ by Oliver Sacks.

That's like saying that archaeology needs to come to grips with Erich von Däniken. It's not as if modern scholars are oblivious to Jaynes’ ideas. They have been examined, but they have been found wanting.

Do you know of any specific critiques of Jaynes' ideas? I'd be very interested to read them.

His (tentative and ancillary) neurological conjectures haven't worked out. The main ideas have not been engaged with or found wanting;there is no prevailing theory of consciousness, and psychology as taught and practiced in the US is laughably reductionistic and has never shaken off the influence of behaviorism. Western science treats the brain as an organ amounting to little more than a set of synaptic reflexes to be either drugged or trained. A 'healthy' mind is is equated with an untroubled economically productive one, and there's no real theory of experience or identity.

Thinkers like Sacks, Dennett, and Hofstatder are well-respected but have little visible influence on the practice of psychology, and the field as a whole is treated as a sideshow in the intellectual carnival. Admittedly the Us does not have a strong public intellectual discourse so I may be looking innovative thinkers who are confined to the academy and have difficulty reaching a wider audience.

never a fan of people saying "X field is missing out on Y book"

it's naive, and it's disrespectful to the field and its experts to claim that a book intentionally written to be accessible to laymen can invalidate the work of specialists.

Interesting research on how hallucinations relate to "an increase in tiny movements in the muscles associated with vocalization".

Maybe the movements and the brain activity causing that happen first, and the "consciousness" just try to interpret that in the best way it can.(I think there are some patterns here that is much like the "interpretations" described in the split brain studies [1]). When the signals get too weird and does not fit in to any interpretation that is defined as "normal", we go into the Schizophrenia territory.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/split-bra...

When I was a child (5 or 6) I remember often hearing voices – sometimes muttering, sometimes shouting angrily. It was often when I was sick, or suffering from a fever. It stopped happening I guess, but I still wonder if that's normal?

This happened to me during my childhood fevers as well. Multiple voices more or less simultaneously saying the same thing, like a group of people whispering in a room, at times growing louder, more insistent, angrier, in the end shouting. Almost forgot about it until I experienced something similar during my brief experimentation with salvia divinorum in my early twenties, though this time the voices sounded somewhat unified and much less like an angry mob, more like some kind of incredulous medieval choir reciting lines about what I was doing while not having any of it.

Fast forward twenty years and the angry insistent mob decided to once more pay me a visit during a sleepless and feverish night, this was about a month ago. Not sure if normal, I'm definitely not, but I've never heard or seen anyone mention this phenomenon in a way I could relate to until you just did.

Yes, exactly that – the voices started out whispering, but would culminate in rage. Interesting, I wonder if there's a name for this.

EDIT: Wrong article!

> Overall the machine works well but I’m still not happy with the hopper and the first stage belt. It is running much slower than the speed at which the parts recognizer works (30 parts / second) and I really would like to come up with something better.

It sounds like your existing hopper is reliable but slow? If that's the case, could you just make two (perhaps somewhat smaller) hoppers and merge their outputs?

Am I.. seeing... voices or is this comment about the Lego sorting machine?

> A lot of time on that blog was spent mocking purely aesthetic features of the homes and I feel like if you like the aesthetic then there is not much else to consider.

In fairness, the blogger spends a lot of time going into the philosophy underlying architectural aesthetics. For example: http://mcmansionhell.tumblr.com/post/161514422581/mmh-does-a...

This seems related to Karna Yakshini in Hindu mysticism - a being that whispers in ears.

Rule #1 of Mental Illness: If God starts talking to you, it's not God.

Carl Sagan talks a little bit about Schizophrenia in his book Dragons of Eden. I've held for a long time now that what we experience as "consciousness" is just an evolutionary adaptation and what we call Schizophrenia is this same adaptation just gone a little haywire. I believe animals, mammals in particular, are fundamentally no different in this regard, it's just that the sophistication of their inner voice is likely to just be far inferior to ours due to our brain/body ratio and the development of the neocortex in humans. For me, personally, I feel that when I speak to myself in my head, the inner-chatter I think of as consciousness, I also feel as though I'm speaking words through my mouth, I'm just not using it. Maybe language also has something to do with it? Maybe we developed language and "consciousness" together?

Just a pet personal theory, could be likely very wrong and I'm sure since this is the Internet somebody will be happy to oblige.

" Maybe we developed language and "consciousness" together?"

I read/watched something some time back. It used to be believed that folks that couldn't hear - and therefore, couldn't talk - also had low IQ's. It turned out this can be correct if folks aren't taught sign language early in life. It went on to refer to language as the program that lets us run consciousness.

So yeah, you are probably onto something. Language and consciousness, if not developed together, definitely seem to go hand in hand.

I like that theory. Maybe much of what we associate with the word "consciousness" are the mental models which cannot exist without language, like the social aspects Yuval Noah Harari talks about.

Talking through a problem in my head is the most natural way to solve it for me. I've always wondered if that counts as hearing voices. Especially because sometimes it's hard to shut off at night when I need to go to sleep.

> Especially because sometimes it's hard to shut off at night when I need to go to sleep.

I recently realized that listening to a "boring" podcast or youtube videos while trying to fall asleep will shut down all those voices and thoughts.

It does. But now it's almost impossible to sleep without it. I'm not sure which is worse.

Yes - I've used ASMR videos for the same purpose; Gently varying sounds seem to be enough to suppress the internal dialogue for me.

There is a window between "interesting enough that it keeps my attention" and "not interesting enough that I need to hear the whole thing" that works for me.

It can't have a narrative arc that makes you want to hear the end, so mostly it's witty but aimless conversations, and newscasts type programs.

It doesn't "count" from a psychological perspective until it really starts impacting your life in negative (and measurable) ways.

A common example might be "keeps you up at night" — which can happen to people from time to time, but the moment it starts damaging your relationships and ability to live comfortably it becomes something that might be a part of a clinical diagnosis (simply "hearing voices" isn't a problem on its own without other factors).

If the public could learn one thing about psychology I think it should probably be that there's never "just one thing" when it comes to identifying problems. A single compulsion doesn't mean you have OCD, for example.

Or you've made some pretty shitty decisions and need to fix your life! Sometimes the voices are trying to help!

typically good voice: "this feels bad, get your shit together so you can avoid this in the future"

typically bad voice: "this feels bad, maybe god will notice you if you start setting things on fire"

No, it's not the same thing at all. There is a distinct difference between your own internal dialogue and hearing voices. When you are hashing out things with yourself, you perceive yourself as the source of the voices/thoughts.

On the contrary, when you hear voices, they are like an intrusion. You do not perceive them as yourself, nor as your own thoughts, but as if someone else stepped into your head and said something that you were not contemplating, in a voice that sounds nothing like your own.

A lot of people experience this phenomena when they are just on the verge of falling asleep. Now imagine that same thing happening when you are wide awake.

In my teens and early 20s I would hear friends calling my name when I was alone especially after a long period of social activity. I know it was just in my head, but it was still an odd sensation. I've never heard anything outside that, but it was definitely different than the inner monologue.

I don't experience it before falling asleep, and rarely at all anymore. My daughter says hearing voices happens to her somewhat regularly on the verge of sleep.

I am interested to try the "imagine a talking head as you are going to sleep" that someone else mentioned.

I think this kind of conversation is fascinating. Personally think that neuroscientists exploring these phenomena and "edge cases" will help improve our understanding of intelligence, the mind, and brain function.

I have had a few cases where a voice has intruded when I was tired, but not about to fall asleep (in one case I was driving). In each case the voice was not talking to me at all, and it was just a snippet, less than a sentence, and then it's gone and does not recur. It is almost as if I am eavesdropping on a bit of random conversation. I have never experienced a visual hallucination (and I have never taken any drugs that could cause either).

I've always wondered if that counts as hearing voices.

In my reading of Buddhist writings, the non-stop, live-streaming audio track is common enough (arguably universal) that this is addressed in those writings. So, no, I don’t think it counts if we all have it. :-)

As far as going to sleep, meditation helps. Zen-style Buddhist meditation addresses “the voice” specifically: be apathetic to it, not trying to block or ignore it, just be with it. Of course the whole of Zen thought can’t be described in a sentence. Contact your local zendo for more information. :-) Personally, when I’ve been a “good” Zen student for a period of time, “the voice” can go away on occasion, usually during meditation. Now that is...different.

You hear voices while you dream.

In my dreams, other people talk without me controlling what they say, so obviously they have their own internal voice independent of mine, yet they all live in my mind. (People I know tend to act like I'd expect them to act. They're the embodiement of my perception of them in real life, but autonomous.) I've always found that strange that people could live in my head during dreaming.

What's more, I sometimes dream of people doing creative things or creating stories. Yet those things obviously come from my own brain. I can't figure out how my brain does it. It's smarter than my conscious self.

If you want to hear voices, just take 400-500mg of Benadryl. Enough to hallucinate, not enough to hospitalize you.

Voices can be blocked by changing brain frequency with binaural beats(brainwave entrainment). Brain is at etheric level a radio receiver.

What does 'etheric level' mean?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etheric_body

You can hear God speaking to you in your mind if you'll make the effort to pray to Him. However, what He responds back with will never contradict his written word (Bible).

People claim God told them to go kill a famous person. What they actually heard was from the devil. They already had some internal reason to want to do the crime anyway.

This is nonsense tautological reasoning. The written word isn't even consistent with itself. Grow up.

You could have said "This is tautological reasoning. The written word isn't even consistent with itself."

And left it at that. As is, your post is just mean.

I've been studying the Bible as if it was a programming book. Kinda like code for how to live~think. I've found it perfectly consistent when taken all in together. You have to understand the different dispensations being referenced therein.

It's really been amazing to actually put it into practice. Take being humble for example. Why would I do that?! Well, it is a concept the Bible mandates. So, I've taken to doing that. I now fully realize how truly stupid I am where previously I felt so smart. I can learn from others much better now.

"People claim God told them to go kill a famous person. What they actually heard was from the devil."

Tell that to Abraham.

God vs devil aside, there was a reason for it in that particular story, and Abraham was given an alternative in the end.

That being said, there are numerous other stories where God did tell people to kill (David vs Goliath, the Isrealites vs the various peoples inhabiting the Promosed Land, etc).

The was a reason for that particular story, true. But Abraham couldn't have known it. He believed he was going to kill his son.

The person who kills their child today, upon hearing instruction from "something," is in the exact same position, right up until the act is completed.

At that point it's really too horrible to even contemplate that it wasn't God.

A study (that I could find if someone is really interested) found that the zone of the brain that activated when you thought about god was the same as the zone that activated when you thought about yourself.

Actually what happens when they hear something unethical is that believing people excuse that on the devil, whereas for atheists it was as stupid moment of yourself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com