I am not a claustrofobic person, but this is... damn... this feels suicidal. Makes you realize that some people are wired way differently than others.
I see it as meaning that you can honestly get used to anything, given enough time. It's inspiring really, when I'm at my worst and darkest times, to think - hey, if someone can deal with being tortured for years and get through it, I can make it through this.
I understand what you're saying, but being tortured for years leaves physiological and psychological scars that never go away.
William Sampson, A Canadian who was tortured for 31 months in Saudi Arabia, died at 52 after suffering four heart attacks in six months.[1]
Three of these were after the torture ended.
[1] https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2012/04/01/william_samp...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812979494
(Curiously, Google search for "James Talbot Blind Descent" points to this very Hacker News thread.)
The usual estimation is that 5% of the population is insane, and I guess they do fill a purpose :)
No thanks, man. I'll stick with kayaking.
This one always gets me a bit:
https://gfycat.com/responsibleboweddalmatian-exploration-cav...
I'm wondering if there's not a second entrance or something that sumped and connects, in the US some tracks are a mile or so back but several hours? Sounds significant.
It's incredible that people can do this as a hobby :)
That's not to say there aren't examples of some truly disturbing spelunking - https://i.imgur.com/BkmpH9v.jpg
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/705347362/Man-trapped-in...
This said, there are limits - in places like that caving gif upthread, I'd freak the hell out.
They went in there with torches.
It must have made for a very transformative experience.
Do other people who are semi-claustrophobic fear the literal tight place, or dying from something going wrong that's out of your control? The same thing applies to heights. I have no problem with heights at all but ladders bother me a lot because I'm always thinking the ladder will fail at any second.
It is a very useful illusion though. I take it as a sort of veneer that the brain hoists over our eyes to make day to day life bearable. There is some truth to the saying "Ignorance is a bliss".
Oddly, this reminds me of my mild fear of driving. I can't ignore the fact that at any moment while driving, I or anyone driving near me could apply a few paltry newtons of force in a way that causes massive injury and destruction, changing or ending lives. Every time I get behind the wheel, I have to wonder at how casually I'm about to pilot a huge mass at lethal speeds around hundreds of other people casually doing the same thing. There's nothing I can directly do to affect the mistakes of others, but I accept the risk of freak accident and resolve to do what I can to at least reduce the risk of disaster (drive defensively). Analogously, we all accept the (demonstrably small) risk of annihilation by, e.g., gamma-ray burst, and go about our lives.
When I was in the dark, squeezing through tiny holes in various angles, I felt a bit like having an "out-of-body" experience, where my brain visualized my whereabouts in some kind of 3D map and internally I was looking at the whole 3D map "from outside"; like viewing an autonomous robot making its moves. It was quite fascinating. I guess sensory deprivation allowed the "3D mapping signal" to be perceivable and dominant.
Also, given there is no smell inside caves, if you spend a few hours/days inside, then climb back to surface, upon entering ground you are hit by a wall of smells you never perceived before. Suddenly you can distinguish individual flowers, trees, grass, soil etc. That however only lasts a few seconds :-(
I actually believe it is possible to consciously 'do' what you describe to at least some degree. It would be nice to hear more about your experience in detail, may I ask you some questions?
Was it as vivid and sharp as daylight open eye view or was it rather blurry / fuzzy?
Where the colors saturated or rather gray?
Was every action instant or was there a time lag?
Did the shapes stay stable or did they deform or fade after a time [of no new inputs (from touch I guess)]?
What did it look like to touch a wall?
How would you describe the field of view you had in your visualization? Normal? All-Round-View onto the 3D map?
Did you have a feeling for the volume where the field of view of your body would be?
How did you visualize your body? Abstractly or more like you might look in daylight?
Could you move as observer in your visualization or was that out of your control?
I guess it was really dampened sensory inputs, not dominating perception as usually, that allowed this kind of planing/internal model to come out. Without spelunking I'd probably use it only subconsciously in sports like when hitting a tennis ball at 120mph and planning all moves in advance, serving a sneaky ball in volleyball etc. I had a similar feeling once when a car that was joining my road almost rammed into me and I just remember that my brain switched to 100% focus and almost automatically did all the crash avoidant tasks where I felt more like an observer, and the calculation was perfect (i.e. no crash).
Sometimes I ask myself if this is similar to how blind people visualize their world. I remember reading from Hellen Keller (deaf-blind from birth) that she also had a visual representation of the world around here. Something along the lines of the human brain is just build for this kind of representation.
I think that there is some common underlying representation that everyone uses. When seeing something through the eyes this representation is overlayed with salient visual sensor input in eye fov and our internal fov just focuses on this for convience and because it is so damn salient. I think it is possible to detach the internal fov from the eye fov and see how the brain models the other regions.
Your suggestions that sensory deprivation brings out the underlying internal representation is very intersting. It makes a lot sense! Really gotta try that sensory deprivation chambers some time =)
It's slightly bigger than your head so if anything attached to your neck is going to get stuck, it'll be your helmet, which you can remove.
That was mysterious to me until I saw the rather large electric lighting fixture on the cave floor. So there must be some larger passage somewhere.
Was there maybe an easier route that has fallen away through the centuries and this is what's left?
Or was there perhaps a religious belief here because honestly, if you were trying to hide things, burying stuff sounds just as effective and quite a bit less dangerous.
1. Shorter / thinner stature compared to today's explorers 2. The caves having compressed / become narrower, even slightly, in the last 1000 years
It has to be able to fit anywhere a small adult can fit. It has to be able to climb anything an adult can climb. There has to be a workable communication strategy (wirless, wired) through tunnels of solid rock. And it has to all that well enough not to need frequent retrieval.