Hacker News Reader

Comment by inanutshellus | Hacker News Reader

Because it's not in the article:

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

> The overview effect is a cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts during spaceflight, often while viewing the Earth from outer space

View on HN

I blew my daughters mind a number of years ago after watching Horton Hears a Who - we're on earth, which is a tiny ball of dust in space - WE ARE THE WHOS.

I wonder if the Overview Effect influenced Shuttleworth to create Ubuntu.

Given the visceral intensity of this effect, it seems like the best hope for world peace or at least the continued survival of the human race is to send as many people into space as possible as soon as possible, starting with world leaders

Or, you know, legalize the hundreds of psychedelic plants that grow like weeds all over the world that have the same effect at an imperceptibly small fraction of the economic and environmental cost...

Anecdote featuring both: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/08/stewart-brand-talks-about-...

(Stewart Brand founded the Long Now Foundation)

Sure, why not both

Given that Stewart Brand is not himself an astronaut I suppose he has zero experience with overview effect and as such, cannot really vouch for the hypothesis that overview effect is similar to psychedelic experiences.

Along with the telephone sanitizers.

And leave them up there.

I have to wonder, given that astronauts in the past have talked about getting the Overview Effect from seeing all of the Earth pass beneath then, and that they'll have had hours to take this in - do people going 100km up over a single spot for 10 minutes really experience it?

Or have they just heard that the Overview Effect is a thing, and are projecting whatever it is they do feel while they're up there, onto it?

What's maybe most fascinating to me about the overview effect is that these sort of influential perspective shifts probably aren't unique to space per se -- it seems interesting and potentially important to understand when they happen and why. what sort of experience causes someone to have a radical change of perspective?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com