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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3662 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 14, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Do you believe in any ‘supernatural’ stuff like ghosts or psionic powers?

What are the most convincing things you’ve seen/read one way or another?

No.

The closest I've come to the supernatural was a single unexplainable experience that I had with another atheist-skeptic at 3am that we both vividly remember. Incredibly fast and close lights with no attached sound passing by us on a lonely highway.

Beyond that, there's been nothing even remotely convincing beyond science being unable to figure out the source of everything. Perhaps a bit unlike nara, I'm comfortable with giving the mathematicians/physicists/astronomers one freebie. I think it's very possible there is no source of everything, it just is.

I've had unnerving instances of intuition, déjà vu, etc. but it happens rarely enough that it seems like a combination of random chance and my sensory data hopping into a "memory" space of my brain.

I have seen claims that deja vu is actually a seizure in the temporal lobe.

Before anyone gets alarmed, that doesn't mean it's a big deal, just a minor hiccup in an otherwise highly specialized and efficient machine. It's a nigh universal experience, and unless it's regular and recurrent, not something to worry about by itself.

https://www.epilepsyadvocate.com/blog/epilepsy-and-deja-vu

What about jamais vu?

The same article claims both count.

As I stress again, just because it is "technically" a seizure is no big deal, it is super common/almost always benign. Just another glitch in the system really.

But some people have chronic jamais vu for a long time. So it can't just be caused by seizures. Unless people can have constant seizures.

The definition of a seizure is simply uncontrolled/abnormal erratic firing of a group of neurons. That can range from anything from weird sensations, muscle jerks or stiffness, and largely inconsequential things like deja vu and jamais vu.

Just because it's a "seizure" doesn't mean it has to align with the popular conception of someone passing out or thrashing about on the floor! Even more broadly recognized forms of seizures can be of little longterm consequence, such as absence seizures in children, which manifest as them zoning out or staring, or just automatically doing things like walking while having no later recollection of events.

DV/JV can be a sign of temporal lobe epilepsy, but is posited to be occur as a very minor/inconsequential form of "seizure" by itself.

For example:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23315620/

Conclusions: Déjà vu is common and qualitatively similar whether it occurs as an epileptic aura or normal phenomenon. However ictal déjà vu occurs more frequently and is accompanied by several distinctive features. It is distinguished primarily by 'the company it keeps'.

There is also active debate on the topic, such as:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3420423/#sec7title

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