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Comment by danielweber | Hacker News Reader

I think it was Dave Barry (writing a serious article) who interviewed a local sheriff about UFO abductees. The sheriff said "people used to call and say their neighbor was a German spy, or using a ray gun on their brain. Then science fiction comes around, and now people call and say their neighbor is an alien, or that they got abducted into a spaceship."

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Carl Sagan wrote about this in The Demon-Haunted World I believe. I recall him talking how in the middle ages, before any UFOs or alien concepts came to be, people saw witches, demons, succubi, etc. Then the "scientific era" came to be and people started to see more "aseptic" images, i.e. aliens wearing lab coats, or other "science-y" stuff.

When I read it, it made a lot of sense. It is quite obvious if you look into it, that people's hallucinations or visions are strongly correlated with their current culture or world view. So you if you see something inexplicable, you are going to call it a ghost for example, but a medieval knight will call it a demon, but maybe someone from 2100 will call it a perturbation of the higgs-field or whatever makes sense then.

Quite interesting effect actually.

My last "visionary episode" occurred a couple of weeks before the Higgs was confirmed, and the Higgs field featured very prominently in the visions. Compare this to how the Higgs must also have featured very prominently in the waking consciousnesses of the scientists working on it at the time, perhaps even in some of their dreams. But the way it appeared in their consciousness is considered more useful, and for a given set of values, it is.

Western industrial society loves the states of consciousness that are good for doing work and making money. It's pretty friendly towards drunkenness. It grudgingly and indifferently tolerates the states that are good for making popular music. It is terrified of pretty much all the others.

I refuse to use the word 'psychosis' because it is so disparaging. The visionary state itself was indescribably wonderful. The physical effects of not eating or sleeping for the duration were bad, but temporary and fairly easy to fix. The subsequent reactions of others, including and especially so-called professionals, were devastating and made my life a living nightmare for about 9 months.

I'm currently reading Trials of the Visionary Mind by psychiatrist John Weir Perry. His views match my experience. I feel the stigma in Western society around non ordinary states is extremely damaging. It may be good for "the machine" or whatever you want to call it, but I know for sure it is very damaging to the lives of affected individuals, and I don't think it's good for society at large.

I propose the term "spurious neuronal excitation."

The current lingo is "hallucination".

Sure, but the word "hallucination" doesn't convey a cause, just a symptom, and has associated cultural baggage. A new term that destigmatizes what is basically a physical phenomenon might help people to stop "blaming" mental illness on the sufferers, where by "blaming" I mean seeing the illness as a fundamental element of the sufferer's human identity, rather than a sidenote as one might see cancer or a broken leg.

That's called the "euphemism treadmill".

Euphemisms tend to be less specific and more detached from reality, while my proposed term, "spurious neuronal excitation," is more specific and based directly on the physical cause.

"My neighbor got bought by Facebook."

I'm pretty sure that science fiction came around before (and influenced) the "ray gun on their brain" thing, too.

Science fiction may have only shaped the "brain ray" idea superficially. James Tilly Matthews, the first documented case of paranoid schizophrenia, complained that he was tormented by a criminal gang operating an "air loom", and he died before Jules Verne was born. This delusion, manifested in some form, appears to be inherent to the condition.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tilly_Matthews

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_the_%22Influen...

Sure, just as the "ray gun on my brain" to "UFOnauts abducting me and messing with my brain" change is superficial.

See Phillip K Dick

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