A difficult case: Diagnosis made by hallucinatory voices (1997) | Hacker News Reader

A difficult case: Diagnosis made by hallucinatory voices (1997)

bmj.com

67 pointssigna1128 comments

PDF:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/1986100/7af16f44ed...

This article reminded me about a strange incident that happened to me a decade ago. I was with a group of friends in a bar playing a game of Trivial Pursuit. None of us were drunk or under the influence of drugs. Sometime, during the middle of the game, it was my turn to answer a question. The question was something like "What is the name of the city in Central America whose name translates to 'silver hills' in the native Nahuatl language?" I sat there dumbfounded, having no clue as to what the answer was. I was about to give up. But, before I could, I heard a voice in my head slowly whispering something. At first I couldn't make the words out, but as the voiced repeated itself, it became clearer. I blurted out: "Tegucigalpa!" The correct answer. My friends looked at me a little bit shocked wondering how I could have know that. The answer must have been buried deep in my mind somewhere, for it to come to me through a voice whispering the answer to me was strange an a little bit unnerving. Nothing like that has happened to me since.

> “To help you see that we are sincere, we would like you to check out the following”

really would like to know what this was about and what else the voices in her head told her, especially unrelated stuff. Also if she could talk to them and if so what it was like to have a conversation like that.

i guess i am more on the X-phobes side on this one as i also suspect this woman knew about her tumor and came up with that story because she had to avoid telling the full truth for whatever reason and "this is the easiest way I could think of". However reading more about what happened with these voices while they were active would likely help me to trust her story more...

The bah-humbug skeptic would have a number of points to question even without questioning the woman's veracity:

1. "As she arrived there, the voices told her to go in and ask to have a brain scan for two reasons—she had a tumour in her brain and her brain stem was inflamed." The article says they found a tumor; did they also find inflammation in the brain stem?

2. What was the media culture like during this era? Hallucinations are highly culturally informed; was there a pre-existing reason someone who was hallucinating would be disposed to hearing medical diagnoses?

3. How often does this happen? If only one person has ever hallucinated -- or otherwise predicted or pulled from thin air -- a medical diagnosis and that one instance was correct, that is one thing, but if thousands and thousands of people have heard a voice conveying a diagnosis, or cast the bones, or read the cards, and most of them are wrong, it makes it far more likely that one or two people would get it right by chance.

The tumor could have bootstrapped the thought that she had the tumor, which led to the actual discovery of the tumor. It's biophysical recursion!

Regarding 3: "helpful" hallucinations are not that unusual. While most who hallucinate are tormented by demons, some hallucinate neutral observers and a few get a "guardian angel" who sometimes gives useful advice. The subconscious can definitely channel "you left the stove on" into a hallucination that commands the person to go turn off the stove. So transformation of awareness of ill-health into that sort of experience doesn't seem too preposterous.

In the case when the patient suspects a brain tumour it would be easier for her to lie about having headaches or different physical symptoms. The story with voices is way too elaborate to result in desired brain scan.

I actually am even more skeptic of these kind of stories. People back then retold tales, and as somebody who has observed how these stories warp over time, i came to the conclusion that the human memory and prophecies is often nothing more then rewritten memorie errors. As in timewise sequence scrambling and rearranging, which can only be interpreted as "magic" knowledge.

I have a condition which might be described as a "blind mind's eye". I don't see internal visuals, nor do I have audio recall. Either modes do not function voluntarally, nor involuntarily.

After discovering other people saw things in mind, and heard things in mind, I found it hard to believe the stories people told me, because I didn't understand how that could be possible. Over time, I grew to understand that none of us see or hear reality in exactly the same way and I accept (as a truth) that others see things in mind, or see reality slight differently than others.

Many probably experience a similar reality, but at the end of the day each of us must trust others through the language and stories they tell.

I remember someone explaining that aphantasia was a thing, And my shock realising I had it and that most people had a completely different experience of the world.

Wiki on it of anyone is curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia?wprov=sfla1

Reminds me of Philip K Dick being told by a pink beam of light that his son was seriously ill and needed to go to the hospital right away. In one version of the story I heard, he told the doctor exactly what was wrong with him when there was realistically no way he could have known.

He was also seriously convinced Stanislaw Lem is a team of communist agents, he didn't believe one person could ever produce that kind of content. So I'd take everything he says with more than a grain of salt.

That Stanislaw Lem was a pseudonym for a collective of authors seems to have been fairly common belief. My mother read his books in the 60s and 70s (in the US), and according to her it was 'well known' at the time that the books where written by several people writing under a single pseudonym.

He's also the godfather of the simulation hypothesis, make of that what you will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkaQUZFbJjE

There are legitimate and recent experiments that have been done to test the simulation hypothesis.

In my opinion, it's really not that far-fetched and the potential fact that we could be living in a simulated universe has no significant effect or consequences for humanity.

I suppose that depends on if we are in a "hands off" simulation or one that is being actively modified. It would also depend on the purpose of the simulation, the duration, the ethical views of the being(s) running the simulation. It seems to me that there is a lot more that can go wrong, so to speak, with a simulation than there is with base level reality. There are more things that can go right as well though, technically a simulation could implement an after life or reincarnation or have some means of exiting the simulation.

If the Universe is cyclic and recreated again and again and has the same outcome(and appparently has no beginning and end), simulation hypothesis have problems to explain why things that follow exactly the same tracks again and again can't be part of Universe as natural mechanism observable by enough developed brains and why there is such necessity for someone to create something that is natural. It also concentrates on humans, but there is nothing that prevents animals - at least for mammals to "remember or guess future". Or even things to "remember" their place, that humans can observe. Anecdotally, but some of the issues, that are discussed in regards human behaviour, were already present in old folk tales, that discuss exactly the same issues, that simulation hypothesis have about human behavior, as in those old folk tales it was claimed that humans initially knew their fate and behaved accordingly without any regards for others when their end came, so they were robbed of that full understanding of what is their fate.

Somewhat similar anecdote, but my uncle had an aneurysm and he swears to this day he saw his dead mother there telling him he didn't have time to call 911 or his wife and that she helped him drive to the hospital somehow and that was the only way he survived it.

> A previously healthy woman began to hear hallucinatory voices telling her to have a brain scan for a tumour. The prediction was true; she was operated on and had an uneventful recovery.

In some circles, phenomena like these are believed to be "spiritual energy downloads" from Source, which is a metaphor to explain an influx of knowledge from an unknown origin.

They typically provide confirmations about your life path, predict something that will occur, or provide much-needed inspiration. They can occur while you are awake or, more commonly, while you are dreaming.

They are sometimes accompanied by physical discomfort such as headaches or bodily aches and pains.

Once I was tripping. A very powerful marijuana cookie.

I was walking in a field. A few friendly disembodied voices chattering at me, about my life and such. I call them "spirits".

Terrible drymouth. Kept sipping from my canteen. It didn't help.

One of the spirits said, "you have drymouth, not because you are dehydrated, but because you injested marijuana. Chew on a blade of grass and that'll fix it".

So I plucked a blade of grass, put it in my mouth and chewed. That fixed the drymouth.

Ok so of all crackpots who have medical related hallucinations, one got it right. This is hardly newsworthy.

Science just isn't there, yet. But yep, people talks.

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