The observer effect, depersonalization and derealization sound a lot like how many mystical traditions describe awakening of Self-realization
From the article:
> Astronauts spend half a year in a mode of continuous self-monitoring — checking themselves, narrating their steps.
Mahasi style noting:
> When you look at the tap or water-pot on arriving at the place where you are to take a drink, be sure to make a mental note, looking, seeing.
> When you stop walking, stopping.
> When you stretch out the hand, stretching.
> When you touch the cup, touching.
> When you take the cup, taking.
> When dipping the cup into the water, dipping.
> When bringing the cup to the lips, bringing.
> When the cup touches the lips, touching.
> When you swallow, swallowing.
> When returning the cup, returning.
> When withdrawing the hand, withdrawing.
> When you bring down the hand, bringing.
> When the hand touches the side of the body, touching. If you intend to turn round, intending.
> When you turn round, turning.
> When you walk forward, walking.
> On arriving at the place where you intend to stop, intending.
> When you stop, stopping.[1]
Six months of noting during ones entire waking experience has certain similarities to being on retreat and doing nothing but the practice. It's remarkable that without any intentional cross pollination, astronauts seemingly arrived at the same place meditators do just by performing the same practices. I wonder if they experienced fruition events during their time in space.
1. Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw Practical Vipassana Exercises https://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/mahasit1.pdf
Is there another name you might know this by? Disassociation is the only thing I can find that sounds similar.
This is a neologism to describe something that is "not in the DSM" and not concretely documented in a particular study. This alleged phenomenon and coinage is the emergent result of some analysis by this journalist, writing for a commercial news site that sells ads but does not launch any astronauts or spacecraft anywhere, much less interview or evaluate them once they've landed and arrived home.
Commenters who are comparing it to a selection in the DSM-IV, or "oh yeah, I felt like this once" anecdotes are projecting subjective experience onto subjective journalism about subjective testimony. Where is our scientific empiricism? Would you like some ketamine? Would you care to take less ketamine?
Therefore, "observer sensation" means just what the journalist chooses it to mean. Nothing more, and nothing less.
And elsewhere you accuse someone of "toe[ing] the line of fascist propaganda" based on your own misrepresentation of what they wrote and meant -- wow. And then there's https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022168 ... lots of hostility and trolling.
Fortunately my HN front end has a mute function. Applied.