
God Helmet - elierotenberg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet
======
antonvs
Or as I call it, the Placebo Effect Helmet.

> The foundations of his theory have been criticized in the scientific press.

> One attempt at replication published in the scientific literature reported a
> failure to reproduce Persinger's effects and the authors proposed that the
> suggestibility of participants, improper blinding of participants or
> idiosyncratic methodology could explain Persinger's results.

> Other groups have reported no effects at all or have generated similar
> experiences by using sham helmets, or helmets that are not turned on, and
> have concluded that personality differences in the participants explain
> these unusual experiences.

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monkeynotes
As a semi-related aside, I have epilepsy and one of the signs I am about to
have a seizure is a sense of presence. It's really hard to describe but I get
an intense feeling like someone is watching me close by. It's a very familiar
feeling, last time I had a seizure, just before I fell to the floor I began to
run away from what I perceived as a presence. Not fun.

~~~
joeblubaugh
My “aura” feels like encountering a bad memory. Like an overpowering bad
memory tied to a place. I can see how it could be interpreted as a mystical
experience

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rozab
>Jack Hitt, a journalist from Wired magazine, visited Persinger's lab in 1999
and expressed confusion over Persinger's post-stimulation debriefing ("One
question: Did the red bulb on the wall grow larger or smaller? There was a red
bulb on the wall? I hadn't noticed.") and reported: "Many other questions
suggest that there were other experiences I should have had, but to be honest,
I didn't. "

What a joke. Why is this in HN? There are better examples of suggestibility
out there.

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ada1981
I’ve had good results with a DIY version of a hypnogogic light.

I used one of these at a psychedelic science conference in SF but they wanted
$25k to buy it. So I set out to build an open-source version for under $100.

The LSD (Light Stimulation Device) can be built for under $50 and is being
used for therapy, relaxation and inducing psychedelic like experiences.

Current version is made with ski googles, lith ion USB rechargable battery,
Arduino with Bluetooth and can pair with a terminal program on IPhone.

The whole project is on GitHub and can be found here:

Http://AnthonyDavidAdams.com/lsd

~~~
MivLives
Thanks for the link. Always been curious to try one of these devices, I can
actually afford to now.

~~~
ada1981
You can build a basic one really cheap!

The software could use some help as it’s just a few basic sequences now.

Next phase would be a nice iPhone app that you can program sequences with.

I’d also like to sync with an EEG headband so you can adjust based on current
brain wave state.

Please send me a photo of your build!

A@175g.com

~~~
MivLives
Will do! I would like to add, it would be kind of nice if you added a picture
of yours to either your site or the github repo. I can see the premade ones
and get an idea of what's going on but it would be nice to see a fully built
one.

~~~
ada1981
Someone was going to do a mini-doc about the project and we were going to do a
full how to video as part of it but then... COVID killed the video star.

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mudita
There doesn't seem to be much to the god helmet, besides the placebo effect,
but at least it inspired this great short story by Peter Watts:
[https://rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Heathens.pdf](https://rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Heathens.pdf)

~~~
totemandtoken
This story is amazing. Thank you so much

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ahelwer
This made me recall some wild online catalog website from the early 2000s that
was primarily known (and advertised) for hoverboard sales, where the
hoverboard was basically a small noisy gas-powered rectangular hovercraft you
could stand on. I think I first saw their ad in Wired, or maybe a gaming
magazine. Anyway if you dug into their catalog there was all sorts of wild
stuff, from sleep masks that used LEDs to induce lucid dreaming to things more
like this. Anyone know the website I'm talking about?

~~~
philwelch
Do the LEDs “induce” lucid dreaming or are they just a cue for you to look
for? Because the cue thing might be slightly less absurd. If you get in the
habit of performing “reality checks” (is checking for things that would be
present in reality but not in a dream or vice versa), you would notice when
you were dreaming and would hence have lucid dreams.

Of course, it’s still a dumb product since you can just check whether written
text changes when you’re not looking at it, but it’s not necessarily as dumb
as it sounds.

~~~
jacobush
My dreams are often pretty chaotic. It would be very uncharacteristically
solemn for me to write something and check if it's there when I look again.

I haven't tried, but I can imagine blinking lights always present would be a
much bigger clue to me.

~~~
pharke
Same, it's pretty difficult to take notes while attempting to rescue someone
from a possessed building that looks a bit like a brutalist interpretation of
the Globe Theatre, what with having to fight your way through its zombie-like
denizens and arguing with a disembodied voice that seems to be controlling the
lighting.

I'm not really sure what I'd do differently in a lucid dream anyways, my
subconscious seems to have a better imagination than I do. Remembering more
details from dreams would be more important for me I guess.

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bregma
If I put this thing on my head, would the aluminum foil I'm already sporting
cause amplification or attenuation of the effect?

~~~
samfriedman
It seems to be based on the manipulation of weak magnetic fields, so aluminum
should not have a noticeable effect.

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jchook
Makes me think of Dr. Weisleder who healed his patients with moonlight, and
eventually drew massive crowds of people to be healed.

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DantesKite
On a side note, I remember the first time I tried an isolation tank; how I
fell into a deep sleep that was different from all previous ones. Felt like my
consciousness was halved but not quite gone (the way it usually is when you
fall asleep).

It was very pleasant. Like an idle dream. An hour went by in a few minutes.
I’ve tried replicating it a few times but never had the same success as the
first time I went.

I’d be curious to know what other states of consciousness exist (and how to
consistently trigger them).

I’d pay good money for some experiences I can do in the comfort of my home.

~~~
mleonhard
With persistence, you can do it for free at home. Here's a guide:

[https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Meditation-
Integrati...](https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Meditation-Integrating-
Mindfulness/dp/1501156985)

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MivLives
This is one of the things I've always wanted to try. Even if it is hockey
pseudoscience as long as it's not actively dangerous it could be interesting.

Alas this and the overview effect are two things I'll probably never
experience.

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Ice_cream_suit
The placebo effect is marvellous...

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undershirt
I thought for most my life that the domain of the objective and the domain of
the real were equivalent. But I missed the subtle gradation toward
uncertainty, maybe seen as concentric concepts starting from center:
commonality of perception (objective) -> body’s reaction to reality
(subjective) -> reality itself (unknowable totality).

The God Helmet is an objective thing you wear (with magnetic property on/off),
with a linguistic component (the story of what it will do), and a subjective
component (the unique experiences the person brings to it and from it). If the
resulting experience has no measurable/repeatable effects across all people,
then it is by definition not admissible as an objective phenomenon (i.e. it
does not fit the lowest common denominator of experience).

