
Hallucinations Are Everywhere (2018) - flannery
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/10/hallucinations-hearing-voices-reality-debate/571819/?single_page=true
======
gerbilly
Sometimes I hallucinate cats, or other small animals like squirrels.

I see them from the corner of my eye, and then when I go to look at them, they
aren't there.

They usually show up when I'm under stress.

I kind of like them, because they remind me to try and relax a bit more.

------
sprokolopolis
Most people are hallucinating anytime they open their eyes. We have blind
spots where the optic nerve goes through the retina. There is no optic
information due to the lack of rods/cones there, so our brain interpolates
that information based on surrounding information. For this reason we don't
see an empty spot in our periphery. You might have tested this effect as a kid
with a paper with an X/dot on either side. When staring at the X you can see
the dot "disappear" if you line things up correctly.

A neurologist (and author of _Phantoms in the Brain_ ), Dr. V. S.
Ramachandran, tried to test the limits of this interpolation with test
subjects with larger blindspots. He found that when looking at text, some
participants found that the brain would create fake glyphs to fill in the
"texture" of the text.

I get insomnia often and have found that when I am very sleep deprived those
blind spots actually exhibit lag and become more detectable. This is
especially noticeable when I turn my head quickly.

------
Yaa101
We are just a ghost in the machine, we do think that we have control but at
all times the physical brain is in charge. Everything we are is a
hallucination, our personality is just calculated sensory input and often
things go wrong with that. There are a lot of outside parameters that make the
process go wrong, it is a near miracle that also things go right and that
there are things like synchronised collective hallucionations between multiple
input/brain interactions (we call that reality). Sometimes also the physical
brain gets damaged by the ghost from the inside. I have been severly depressed
for years and learned the hard way about hallucinations, but learning about
that and accepting the hallucination took away that depression. As far as I
see it, thinking is a form of radiation inside the brain, containing particles
and waves, and those waves can be disturbed very easy

~~~
HNLurker2
So you identify with the brain?

~~~
Yaa101
Of course not, everybody identifies with the ghost. Although the brain is a
work of evolutionary art, it's still just a dumb machine. The hallucination
within is just a weird artifact of how that machine works.

Just a wave of the radiation, nothing more, nothing less.

~~~
HNLurker2
but it is still dying. Some people identify with their political movement.
Other identify with other people (Ubuntu: person living through a person). Or
just simply believe in your self (all packages together).

------
ZeroFries
Everything is a hallucination, since everything is an internal representation
([1] direct vs indirect realism). The real question is why do these
hallucinations seem consistent enough to generate a shared world/consensus
reality. I think David Pearce answers this well [2].

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism)

2: [https://www.quora.com/How-can-we-explain-the-shared-
experien...](https://www.quora.com/How-can-we-explain-the-shared-experience-
of-reality)

~~~
pierrebai
This is the typical philosopher going one (well, at least one) step too far.
If I cut off my hand, I'll experience my hand being cut off, people will see
my hand cut off and surgeons could try to stitch it back. To qualify reality
as a shared illusion is fine after a night of drinking. To hold such a view in
face of independent viewers perceiving essentially the same events without
having to communicate is ludicrous. That perception is imperfect and that
people can disagree does make a proof of delusion.

~~~
ZeroFries
This doesn't qualify reality as a shared illusion, it qualifies our experience
of it as a private illusion, with shared/overlapping characteristics. It's not
the pragmatic, common-sense way of interpreting our experience of the world,
but no one said the truth had to match up with pragmatics. If you think you
see an error in the actual logic leading to that conclusion, please point it
out, but deeming it unpragmatic (or ludicrous) isn't one.

------
hosh
There should be a distinction between sensory hallucinations and _delusions_.
I think it is usually the latter that people are more concerned about.

~~~
sampleinajar
I agree. I'm not sure some people understand the distinction. Hallucinations
are really just the input, in this case a faulty input. Delusions are faulty
conclusions. You can have delusions without hallucinations, and hallucinations
can come without delusions.

~~~
hosh
Yup. And the scary thing about delusions is that often times, people under
delusions are not aware of them.

I'm trying to recall this long article someone wrote. Her mother had moved her
and her family to Canada for witness protection. It turned out though, the
mother was under the influence of someone who was deluded into thinking they
were out to get her. It took years before the author came across evidence to
the contrary. Her father and her aunts were not dead after all. At which
point, the person who was deluded said, oh, that's cause they had been
replaced by clones.

I make a distinction here in that, I think the mother here was herself not
delusional. She was influenced, and perhaps, could herself reason herself away
from it given time. The person who was delusional, however, will continue to
generate new explanations to fit the evidence around that delusion ... and is
probably not even aware of it. According to the author, he was otherwise
rational in everything else but his delusion.

~~~
toomanybeersies
> often times, people under delusions are not aware of them

Isn't that the required quality for it to be a delusion? The moment you
realise that a thought or a perception is a delusion, it is no longer one.

Also, this is the story you're thinking of:
[https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-42951788](https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-42951788)

~~~
hosh
That sounds reasonable.

What would you call persistent beliefs that you know are erroneous, and yet
you cannot somehow shake?

~~~
toomanybeersies
I guess I'd call that cognitive dissonance.

------
drcongo
I've heard voices for as long as I can remember but immediate link most people
jump to with psychosis meant I never told anyone until I was in my 30s. Only
when I heard, I think, a RadioLab episode where they mentioned somewhere
around one in ten do did I think that maybe I'm not teetering on madness.

It happens whenever I manage to stop thinking, which isn't often. This makes
two things incredibly difficult - getting to sleep and meditation. Getting to
sleep I've pretty much nailed thanks to melatonin and Radio4 through some
speakers under my pillow. Meditation though I've pretty much given up on - the
second I manage to reach any kind of meditative state I hear snippets of
speech which _always_ kicks my brain into thinking about what the voice just
said. I feel like I haven't actually relaxed in 40 odd years.

~~~
ebg13
So now that you're no longer keeping it completely private, have you spoken to
a therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist about it? It sounds like it's
caused you a lot of strife for a long time.

> _Only when I heard, I think, a RadioLab episode where they mentioned
> somewhere around one in ten do did I think that maybe I 'm not teetering on
> madness._

I'm obviously not your doctor, but whatever is happening to you so much that
you haven't been able to relax in 40 years probably doesn't happen to 1 in 10
people. Certainly not to the degree that you describe. ”This one time this
thing happened” isn't the same as "I can't sleep because of the voices". But
anyway, maybe the whole world is teetering on madness.

------
tomcam
I once worked three days straight finishing a manual and started to see small
dinosaurs around the office. My girlfriend drove 65 miles to keep me company
when she heard about it.

------
Smithalicious
Yep, all the time. Some are pretty easy to trigger consistently too; think
about insects and you'll start feeling them everywhere. Ride a bus for a while
or swim in a wave pool and you'll be feeling like you're moving when going to
bed. Desperately try to find something you've lost and you'll start seeing it
everywhere.

Some senses are way easier to fool than others. For example I hear things that
aren't actually there all the time, but I don't recall ever tasting something
that wasn't there. I wonder how it is with smell; I do sometimes vaguely smell
things (e.g. certain kinds of food, cat pee) that I then can't find anywhere,
but the nose is very sensitive to trace amounts of chemicals so there isn't
really a way to verify whether what you're smelling is real or imagined in
that case.

------
pmarreck
What distinguishes a hallucination from a perception of a real thing? I'm
hoping it's not simply the criteria of "anything without a rational
explanation is a hallucination"

Also, if people hallucinated all the time, I'd think there'd be a LOT more
accidents on the road!

~~~
penagwin
I'm not sure you understand, when they say "everyone hallucinates all the
time" they include you and me. Those hallucinations don't have to be "big" or
disruptive.

A hallucination is where your brains perception doesn't match "reality". Maybe
you thought the lights flickered for a brief moment but they didn't, or may
you thought you saw a shadow move.

The article explains it pretty well, it's very common with things you
"expect". Such as your phone vibrating when it isn't, or after watching an
insect documentary makes you feel like there's an ant on you (called
Formication), or feeling a raindrop when expecting rain (only to realize your
skin isn't wet).

EDIT: That is to say - hallucinations aren't usually disruptive enough to
cause car accidents, most of the time we just kind of "brush it off" so to
speak and forget about it.

------
Barrin92
Did anyone else follow the link to the sine wave example and clearly made out
the voice on the first try? Welp no I'm concerned

~~~
hosh
I heard it. I was also primed. I read the rest of the paragraph before trying
it.

I've had enough psychedelic experiences though, so maybe that is it :-)

~~~
jimmaswell
I hadn't read forwards when I tried it and I've had no psychedelic
experiences, but I heard it too. I've only ever had the "normal"
hallucinations, like phone vibration or once or twice hearing someone say my
name.

------
mdekkers
A few weeks ago, I was drifting off to sleep and heard my name being spoken.
Extremely clear, and right in my ear.

It freaked me right the fuck out.

------
mycall
Microdosing is the best of both worlds -- you get the same focus and random
insights without the hallucinations.

------
ebg13
> _If you’ve ever felt the buzz of your phone against your thigh only to
> realize the sensation was entirely in your head_

I get what they're trying to say, but the much more plausible explanation for
"phantom phone vibrations" is actual phone vibrations. There are all kinds of
things, electromechanical and software, interactive and non-interactive, that
cause phones to vibrate. My current phone vibrates if you look at the
fingerprint unlock sensor the wrong way. An old phone of mine would vibrate
and wake up the screen randomly without any visible notifications and behaved
strangely for weeks after exposure to a small bit of rain. My current phone
regularly flashes transient notifications (I think maybe from a Motorola app?)
that are gone faster than I can read what they are. The point is that, on
average, software and hardware are both basically shit and do things that
they're not supposed to do all the time.

~~~
kgwxd
Not when there's no phone anywhere near your thigh. Have personally
experienced that enough to know for sure it's a thing.

