The children who remember their past lives
May 2, 2024 8:05 PM Subscribe
What happens when your toddler is haunted by memories that aren’t hers? In Louisiana in 2000, 2-year-old James Leininger would wake screaming, repeating the same phrases to his baffled and disturbed parents: “Airplane crash on fire! Little man can’t get out!” Over the following year, a story unspooled in memories and drawings: He was a World War II pilot whose plane took off from a boat, and he died when he was shot down by Japanese forces. James offered names of people and places, and his account would ultimately become one of the most prominent and thoroughly documented “cases of the reincarnation type,” or CORT, ever recorded.
A more skeptical look at the Leininger case.
posted by interogative mood at 8:13 PM on May 2 [74 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 8:13 PM on May 2 [74 favorites]
Well, this is fascinating. I wonder if I talked about things when I was younger. I don't have many memories of my life before maybe age 8? A few hazy dribs and drabs...
The thing is, for me, I've had at least two different people who claimed to be psychic or able to see things or whatever, out of the blue completely unbidden, that I'm the reincarnated soul of some boy who was killed in Viet Nam in early 1967. I was born in early 1968. I was an infant adoption, and given the timing I've always assumed that I was college girl's spring break fling right before the Summer Of Love.
Anyway, I didn't ask for either of these two people to read me at all. They both approached me cold and told me this. So now I'm left to wonder what kind of things I might have said 50-odd years ago.
posted by hippybear at 8:20 PM on May 2 [15 favorites]
The thing is, for me, I've had at least two different people who claimed to be psychic or able to see things or whatever, out of the blue completely unbidden, that I'm the reincarnated soul of some boy who was killed in Viet Nam in early 1967. I was born in early 1968. I was an infant adoption, and given the timing I've always assumed that I was college girl's spring break fling right before the Summer Of Love.
Anyway, I didn't ask for either of these two people to read me at all. They both approached me cold and told me this. So now I'm left to wonder what kind of things I might have said 50-odd years ago.
posted by hippybear at 8:20 PM on May 2 [15 favorites]
This is still kind of woo, but I believe that there is a phenomenon emerging from our eusocial evolution which is that our individuality as greatly exaggerated. Much like the fact that you have a 1 in 135 chance of having an exact facial doppelganger, I believe a combination of ambient media, shared culture, and intuition can lead to the reduplication of identities and personalities.
So my conjecture is that this is less a case of spiritual continuity and transference and more a matter that infants and toddlers can make incredible developmental leaps that can seem like reincarnation when it's really more a combination of strong, uninhibited imaginations and the sparks of a powerful intuitive and perceptive acuity not yet battered down by social and linguistic conditioning.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 8:21 PM on May 2 [12 favorites]
So my conjecture is that this is less a case of spiritual continuity and transference and more a matter that infants and toddlers can make incredible developmental leaps that can seem like reincarnation when it's really more a combination of strong, uninhibited imaginations and the sparks of a powerful intuitive and perceptive acuity not yet battered down by social and linguistic conditioning.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 8:21 PM on May 2 [12 favorites]
It's pure bullshit.
posted by ovvl at 8:27 PM on May 2 [82 favorites]
posted by ovvl at 8:27 PM on May 2 [82 favorites]
That link interogative mood shared is disturbing. Especially the stuff about the past life therapist encouraging the parents to tell a child that his nightmares were as the result of a past life.
What does that do to a child?
posted by Zumbador at 8:34 PM on May 2 [35 favorites]
What does that do to a child?
posted by Zumbador at 8:34 PM on May 2 [35 favorites]
I know the legacy media is in a weird place these days but what the heck is this doing in a newspaper?
posted by pullayup at 8:34 PM on May 2 [45 favorites]
posted by pullayup at 8:34 PM on May 2 [45 favorites]
It's as least as valid as the UFO/UAE conversations we've been having lately.
And those have gone SO well!
posted by hippybear at 8:36 PM on May 2 [3 favorites]
And those have gone SO well!
posted by hippybear at 8:36 PM on May 2 [3 favorites]
Old and tired: UFOs are really real, this time, you guys, honest
New hotness: reincarnation is really real, this time, you guys, honest
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:37 PM on May 2 [28 favorites]
New hotness: reincarnation is really real, this time, you guys, honest
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:37 PM on May 2 [28 favorites]
The doppleganger thing is real though.
I have had a couple come up to me at the grocery store and say, "hey how are you doing? You worked at DHS right?' And then argued with me that I had never worked at DHS, and wasn't the person they thought I was. And as a fairly distinctive man, with long hair and such, I kind of stand out a bit. It was weird. Also seeing a picture of someone in the newspaper, at a job fair, which totally looked like me...
Not to mention all the baseball and basketball players, the guy at the Les Schwab, the guy who's name was on the engineering sign outside of the library that was up for review, who share my name. Freaky stuff.
But yes, this seems like BS. When we die, we are done. Other than the lessons we can pass on to our people, and have to hope our lessons matter. We are just meat. Like all the other animals on the planet. "Meat that can think?"
posted by Windopaene at 8:43 PM on May 2 [2 favorites]
I have had a couple come up to me at the grocery store and say, "hey how are you doing? You worked at DHS right?' And then argued with me that I had never worked at DHS, and wasn't the person they thought I was. And as a fairly distinctive man, with long hair and such, I kind of stand out a bit. It was weird. Also seeing a picture of someone in the newspaper, at a job fair, which totally looked like me...
Not to mention all the baseball and basketball players, the guy at the Les Schwab, the guy who's name was on the engineering sign outside of the library that was up for review, who share my name. Freaky stuff.
But yes, this seems like BS. When we die, we are done. Other than the lessons we can pass on to our people, and have to hope our lessons matter. We are just meat. Like all the other animals on the planet. "Meat that can think?"
posted by Windopaene at 8:43 PM on May 2 [2 favorites]
The doppleganger thing is real though.
So, I'm the guy who gets chatty with strangers waiting in line to get in to a concert? I begin conversations easily, especially performative conversations. And in the area in which I live there aren't that many people who are the type to pay for arena shows [and there's only one arena], so I often run into people in line for shows whom I've met before. And this is usually fun, and makes for a more relaxed wait in line.
This has been less easy in the COVID era, as I tend to have a mask on for arena events now. Live was more fun in the Before Times.
Anyway, I had one incident a decade or more ago with this woman who swore up and down that she knew me from some Dead show about 5 years before. I have never been to a Dead show, despite maybe being the type, but her insistence was really troublesome. She KNEW she had met me before, she had a name for me that I don't remember now, and she was harping on me for ignoring her with this insistent needy energy.
I finally bailed out of the line to "go find a restroom". I had a reserved seat and could get back into a line and not lose anything like I might have if it were a GA situation.
To this day I don't know if I have a doppelgänger out there someplace who fucked up this woman's vibe at a Dead concert someplace, or if she thought I was a mark she could work with this gambit.
posted by hippybear at 8:51 PM on May 2 [9 favorites]
So, I'm the guy who gets chatty with strangers waiting in line to get in to a concert? I begin conversations easily, especially performative conversations. And in the area in which I live there aren't that many people who are the type to pay for arena shows [and there's only one arena], so I often run into people in line for shows whom I've met before. And this is usually fun, and makes for a more relaxed wait in line.
This has been less easy in the COVID era, as I tend to have a mask on for arena events now. Live was more fun in the Before Times.
Anyway, I had one incident a decade or more ago with this woman who swore up and down that she knew me from some Dead show about 5 years before. I have never been to a Dead show, despite maybe being the type, but her insistence was really troublesome. She KNEW she had met me before, she had a name for me that I don't remember now, and she was harping on me for ignoring her with this insistent needy energy.
I finally bailed out of the line to "go find a restroom". I had a reserved seat and could get back into a line and not lose anything like I might have if it were a GA situation.
To this day I don't know if I have a doppelgänger out there someplace who fucked up this woman's vibe at a Dead concert someplace, or if she thought I was a mark she could work with this gambit.
posted by hippybear at 8:51 PM on May 2 [9 favorites]
I was lucky enough to actually meet my "doppelganger" when I was in high school and I'm sure we both felt an equal amount of insult when we realized that people mistake me for *her.* It's like an uncanny valley situation.
posted by muddgirl at 9:07 PM on May 2 [12 favorites]
posted by muddgirl at 9:07 PM on May 2 [12 favorites]
*cough*bullshit*cough*
Give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume it started innocently enough with a credulous couple wanting to demonstrate how awesome and special their little snowflake is and glomming on to the resurrection notion. But then self-aggrandizement is its own reward, and thousands of influencer parents prove that exploiting their offspring for page views provides excellent ego stroking. Not only an attention-getter, but the shtick turns out to be a moneymaker! Now we've got a lifestyle centered around 'my son, the resurrected hero.'
Munchausen syndrome by proxy is now being called Factitious Disorder, and I think this whole weird web of lies built around the child by the parents, only using resurrection as a focal point rather than illness, has got to be a species of Factitious Disorder all its own.
Poor James. He couldn't just be allowed to be a little boy, just himself, he had to be some other person. There really wasn't ever a James, just this Huston guy that his parents were fascinated with.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:09 PM on May 2 [21 favorites]
Give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume it started innocently enough with a credulous couple wanting to demonstrate how awesome and special their little snowflake is and glomming on to the resurrection notion. But then self-aggrandizement is its own reward, and thousands of influencer parents prove that exploiting their offspring for page views provides excellent ego stroking. Not only an attention-getter, but the shtick turns out to be a moneymaker! Now we've got a lifestyle centered around 'my son, the resurrected hero.'
Munchausen syndrome by proxy is now being called Factitious Disorder, and I think this whole weird web of lies built around the child by the parents, only using resurrection as a focal point rather than illness, has got to be a species of Factitious Disorder all its own.
Poor James. He couldn't just be allowed to be a little boy, just himself, he had to be some other person. There really wasn't ever a James, just this Huston guy that his parents were fascinated with.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:09 PM on May 2 [21 favorites]
Also like in the ufo/uap posts you’ll find that Robert Bigelow is funding this “research”.
posted by interogative mood at 9:16 PM on May 2 [10 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 9:16 PM on May 2 [10 favorites]
The What is the creepiest thing your child ever said to you? Reddit thread is full of stories like this.
They're not stereotyped and come in all different forms, and whenever I read that thread, eventually they become kind of compelling.
posted by jamjam at 9:30 PM on May 2 [24 favorites]
They're not stereotyped and come in all different forms, and whenever I read that thread, eventually they become kind of compelling.
posted by jamjam at 9:30 PM on May 2 [24 favorites]
I think quite a lot of parents are susceptible to losing track of the fact that their kids are not, in fact, them. The idea that a kid might have been somewhere or seen something that the parents don't know about, then, simply never occurs to them.
But maintaining tight operational security is absurdly difficult even when that's what we're trying to do. A belief that I could possibly have complete knowledge of what anybody who is not me has seen or heard and might therefore possibly remember is simply not justifiable.
posted by flabdablet at 9:55 PM on May 2 [17 favorites]
But maintaining tight operational security is absurdly difficult even when that's what we're trying to do. A belief that I could possibly have complete knowledge of what anybody who is not me has seen or heard and might therefore possibly remember is simply not justifiable.
posted by flabdablet at 9:55 PM on May 2 [17 favorites]
What does that do to a child?
They fuck you up, your mum and dad
They may not mean to, but they do...
posted by flabdablet at 10:05 PM on May 2 [39 favorites]
They fuck you up, your mum and dad
They may not mean to, but they do...
posted by flabdablet at 10:05 PM on May 2 [39 favorites]
I do seem to have had more weird interactions with strangers about who I might be from the past than others. I'm only reporting the major incidents.
Now I'm really wondering what is going on.
posted by hippybear at 10:11 PM on May 2
Now I'm really wondering what is going on.
posted by hippybear at 10:11 PM on May 2
I had an out of body near death experience when I was a teenager, that I still cannot fit into any kind of framework than I can explain in rational terms
There's a huge class of experiences for which attempts to fit them into any kind of framework achieves nothing but distorting the memory of them. Doesn't stop people trying, though, which is a pity because it makes it so much harder to learn from them.
posted by flabdablet at 10:12 PM on May 2 [4 favorites]
There's a huge class of experiences for which attempts to fit them into any kind of framework achieves nothing but distorting the memory of them. Doesn't stop people trying, though, which is a pity because it makes it so much harder to learn from them.
posted by flabdablet at 10:12 PM on May 2 [4 favorites]
True flabdabalet...
Mine, not as bad as others, but reflecting on things, I can totally see how they did fuck me up.
And one of my goals as a parent was not to fuck my kids up. They are mostly all pretty awesome, so I think I did OK, despite some of the fucked up things I did. And my kids have various flavors of "weirdo" in them, but they are all so far still pretty awesome. And only one had to deal with my having a mental breakdown and saying something I wish I could take back.
My kids are all awesome people. And I am so proud of the stances they have taken, and the people they have become. And I think me and Ms. Windo have provided a more accepting environment than I was ever given. And I am proud of doing better than my parents.
And that's all I can ever want. "I have been better to my kids than my parents were". Squad goals.
posted by Windopaene at 10:19 PM on May 2 [7 favorites]
Mine, not as bad as others, but reflecting on things, I can totally see how they did fuck me up.
And one of my goals as a parent was not to fuck my kids up. They are mostly all pretty awesome, so I think I did OK, despite some of the fucked up things I did. And my kids have various flavors of "weirdo" in them, but they are all so far still pretty awesome. And only one had to deal with my having a mental breakdown and saying something I wish I could take back.
My kids are all awesome people. And I am so proud of the stances they have taken, and the people they have become. And I think me and Ms. Windo have provided a more accepting environment than I was ever given. And I am proud of doing better than my parents.
And that's all I can ever want. "I have been better to my kids than my parents were". Squad goals.
posted by Windopaene at 10:19 PM on May 2 [7 favorites]
why reincarnation, when "ghosts!" is right there
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:27 PM on May 2 [19 favorites]
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:27 PM on May 2 [19 favorites]
OK, got ninjaed by flabdabet, so I will tell my story.
I was like 16. Folks went out of town so was staying with a family friend. Went to the local swimming pool with their kids. Went up to the high diving board. As I went to do a fabulous can-opener, tripped. Hit my head on the board, and went down. Don't remember much, but remember being asked questions about who my parents were after the lifeguards fished me out.
Then remember being in a hallway in a hospital, waiting to be seen. I had fractured my skull, so there was some possible memory issues there...
Then remember seeing, from above, a foam pad with ECG type things being attached to my back. Stopped breathing in the OR, but woke up in a hospital bed, not dead. In my room when I awoke was another kid who had had something happen to him. And as the nurses were tending to him, saw four suction cup kind of markers on his back, where the pad would have been put on me...
I never knew this was something, and cannot imagine how I would have known about it, but there it was. And I still can't explain it. And I am the biggest skeptic/atheist you can imagine. But it still is unexplainable in my mind.
But past lives seems like a bit of a stretch. Might be cool if it were, but, I doubt it.
posted by Windopaene at 10:36 PM on May 2 [2 favorites]
I was like 16. Folks went out of town so was staying with a family friend. Went to the local swimming pool with their kids. Went up to the high diving board. As I went to do a fabulous can-opener, tripped. Hit my head on the board, and went down. Don't remember much, but remember being asked questions about who my parents were after the lifeguards fished me out.
Then remember being in a hallway in a hospital, waiting to be seen. I had fractured my skull, so there was some possible memory issues there...
Then remember seeing, from above, a foam pad with ECG type things being attached to my back. Stopped breathing in the OR, but woke up in a hospital bed, not dead. In my room when I awoke was another kid who had had something happen to him. And as the nurses were tending to him, saw four suction cup kind of markers on his back, where the pad would have been put on me...
I never knew this was something, and cannot imagine how I would have known about it, but there it was. And I still can't explain it. And I am the biggest skeptic/atheist you can imagine. But it still is unexplainable in my mind.
But past lives seems like a bit of a stretch. Might be cool if it were, but, I doubt it.
posted by Windopaene at 10:36 PM on May 2 [2 favorites]
hippybear, my explanation would be that if you look "non standard" you might have a higher than average chance of being confused for other non standard people. "hey there's that guy with long hair again! I saw him the other day too! "
posted by Zumbador at 10:48 PM on May 2 [3 favorites]
posted by Zumbador at 10:48 PM on May 2 [3 favorites]
From pics I have seen, hippybear does not look like a hippy with long hair...
posted by Windopaene at 10:57 PM on May 2 [2 favorites]
posted by Windopaene at 10:57 PM on May 2 [2 favorites]
So.. okay, yes, maybe but... I am far enough outside the standard that I'm not easily confused with others. I have a pretty distinctive longer beard and a tendency to wear certain kinds of hats and caps and to dress in a rather specific way.
Now, I could accept that there might be others out there who resemble me. I've met a couple of them, although the resemblance was pretty minimal. The thing is, I'm not "that guy who looks like 100 other guys". I'm "that guy who looks like maybe one or two other people here at this concert of 12,000 people". And if there is anyone else there that could be confused for me, that is entirely rare.
To be honest, I've managed to wrangle readmittance into venues by pointing out to the person at the door that, honestly, they're going to remember my face. And back when I was smoking I'd go out and smoke and get back in, a privilege others were not necessarily afforded.
Anyway, I say none of this to brag in any way. I'm just pointing out, I don't look like "that other guy with long hair" in any way shape or form. I will be seeing Pearl Jam in Missoula in August of this year and I fully expect people at that show to recognize me from previous Pearl Jam shows. It's just a part of my life.
posted by hippybear at 11:08 PM on May 2 [1 favorite]
Now, I could accept that there might be others out there who resemble me. I've met a couple of them, although the resemblance was pretty minimal. The thing is, I'm not "that guy who looks like 100 other guys". I'm "that guy who looks like maybe one or two other people here at this concert of 12,000 people". And if there is anyone else there that could be confused for me, that is entirely rare.
To be honest, I've managed to wrangle readmittance into venues by pointing out to the person at the door that, honestly, they're going to remember my face. And back when I was smoking I'd go out and smoke and get back in, a privilege others were not necessarily afforded.
Anyway, I say none of this to brag in any way. I'm just pointing out, I don't look like "that other guy with long hair" in any way shape or form. I will be seeing Pearl Jam in Missoula in August of this year and I fully expect people at that show to recognize me from previous Pearl Jam shows. It's just a part of my life.
posted by hippybear at 11:08 PM on May 2 [1 favorite]
Yes sorry I obviously have no idea what hippybear looks like, my long hair quote was intended as an example of a non standard feature a person might focus on.
posted by Zumbador at 11:09 PM on May 2 [1 favorite]
posted by Zumbador at 11:09 PM on May 2 [1 favorite]
They fuck you up, your mum and dad
They may not mean to, but they do...
Your haiku is good, and with a bit of structural revision it could be great.
posted by fairmettle at 11:12 PM on May 2 [4 favorites]
They may not mean to, but they do...
Your haiku is good, and with a bit of structural revision it could be great.
posted by fairmettle at 11:12 PM on May 2 [4 favorites]
My point with any of this is, it is really fucking strange to be told by strangers that you're a reincarnated dead soldier when you didn't ask them to say anything about you. Or to have a woman insist that she knows you when you've never been anywhere this woman has been before. Life is full of really bizarre incidents and I've had my share of them. And if I could have explained any of it away as "yeah, I look like other people", I would have dismissed it by now rather than carried it with me for literally years.
posted by hippybear at 11:13 PM on May 2 [2 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 11:13 PM on May 2 [2 favorites]
Your haiku is good,
sigh
This Be The Verse
BY PHILIP LARKIN
posted by hippybear at 11:14 PM on May 2 [12 favorites]
sigh
This Be The Verse
BY PHILIP LARKIN
posted by hippybear at 11:14 PM on May 2 [12 favorites]
With the double thing it's also worth remembering that people have a range of abilities relating to recognition of faces. Some can remember a face over a decade, others might not file away someone they met recently. Its probably best not to assume everyone has the same skillset or that your internal experience is the norm.
posted by biffa at 12:22 AM on May 3 [12 favorites]
posted by biffa at 12:22 AM on May 3 [12 favorites]
Sorry but its wOoooOooOo nonsense.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:34 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:34 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
Hippybear, I love the details of your life that I've seen sprinkled in your comments over the years.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 12:40 AM on May 3 [10 favorites]
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 12:40 AM on May 3 [10 favorites]
For anyone interested, the Squaring the Strange podcast did an episode on reincarnation talking about cases like this, maybe even this one in particular.
posted by mochi_cat at 1:05 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
posted by mochi_cat at 1:05 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
ME, MYSELF AND I – FRANCOIS BRUNELLE AND HIS DOPPELGÄNGER PROJECT [FIND YOUR LOOK ALIKE]
posted by chavenet at 1:42 AM on May 3 [3 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 1:42 AM on May 3 [3 favorites]
I was going to try and find the Doppelgänger project - thanks chavenet! I met a cousin a couple years ago who is/was a eerie sort of doppelgaenger in that, though we don't look very much alike the composite experience is of two very similar people. I double-take'd when we met, as did he - as did everyone. And over the years here, in Berlin, I've seen a handful of people who look eerily like people I knew back in NYC - most recently at the climbing gym, a guy I knew in college who was a very sweet hippy-adjacent guy (who has developed into an amazing fabric artist/ trans advocate) has a doppelgänger of his younger self (!) It was really striking. Every time I see him I think the same thing - dude, on another continent you are living a different, somewhat exceptional life...
Also on the issue of re-incarnation, is Catharine Burroughs, a Tibetan Lama who re-incarnated into a Brooklyn woman's life/body. And I think Steven Segel bought himself a re-incarnated lama-ness... oh, wait, did I say that out loud? I mean, he was discovered to have been...
posted by From Bklyn at 2:40 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
Also on the issue of re-incarnation, is Catharine Burroughs, a Tibetan Lama who re-incarnated into a Brooklyn woman's life/body. And I think Steven Segel bought himself a re-incarnated lama-ness... oh, wait, did I say that out loud? I mean, he was discovered to have been...
posted by From Bklyn at 2:40 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
I am far enough outside the standard that I'm not easily confused with others. I have a pretty distinctive longer beard and a tendency to wear certain kinds of hats and caps and to dress in a rather specific way.
To me that actually makes it seem all the more likely that someone with not the greatest memory would conflate you with someone else who stands out. I myself know someone who (to me) looks just like your profile picture; I don't know him all that well, so what I think of when I think of him is his beard, his build, his clothes, and his posture and body language, all of which your picture evokes.
As far as doppelgangers, I think there's a large set of facial features that repeat a lot across the world, in different combinations, and because there's billions of humans out there, combinations can repeat too. (I watch a lot of TV from around the world and one thing that's fun is sometimes coming across very distinctive-looking actors who really, really resemble very distinctive-looking actors from somewhere else, often across national and "racial" lines. Some type of nose combined with some type of forehead and cheekbones and mouth and jaw and... voila, you get uncanny resemblance.)
As far as being told, more often than other people, that you're the incarnation of someone else - I don't know, but I'd guess you might also be spending more time than most people around the kind of people who would say such a thing in the first place. And possibly give the impression, more than other people, that you might be receptive to such claims. (And if someone is claiming to be a psychic and telling people they are reincarnations of someone, then it needs to be someone who died in a plausible year, and I guess for you the Vietnam War is conveniently placed, timewise, and hey, lots of young American men are known to have died there and it has a certain mystique; why few people ever make claims about the reincarnation of someone who died in a mundane, or even less interestingly traumatic way, like a car crash, is something to consider.)
Anyway, the debunking article is worth reading. The thing that stood out most for me was the part about how the University of Virginia Health System funds a Division of Perceptual Studies (its mission: "Scientific Study of Extraordinary Experiences") - and how un-rigorous its director is (according to the debunker) in his methods.
posted by trig at 2:45 AM on May 3 [13 favorites]
To me that actually makes it seem all the more likely that someone with not the greatest memory would conflate you with someone else who stands out. I myself know someone who (to me) looks just like your profile picture; I don't know him all that well, so what I think of when I think of him is his beard, his build, his clothes, and his posture and body language, all of which your picture evokes.
As far as doppelgangers, I think there's a large set of facial features that repeat a lot across the world, in different combinations, and because there's billions of humans out there, combinations can repeat too. (I watch a lot of TV from around the world and one thing that's fun is sometimes coming across very distinctive-looking actors who really, really resemble very distinctive-looking actors from somewhere else, often across national and "racial" lines. Some type of nose combined with some type of forehead and cheekbones and mouth and jaw and... voila, you get uncanny resemblance.)
As far as being told, more often than other people, that you're the incarnation of someone else - I don't know, but I'd guess you might also be spending more time than most people around the kind of people who would say such a thing in the first place. And possibly give the impression, more than other people, that you might be receptive to such claims. (And if someone is claiming to be a psychic and telling people they are reincarnations of someone, then it needs to be someone who died in a plausible year, and I guess for you the Vietnam War is conveniently placed, timewise, and hey, lots of young American men are known to have died there and it has a certain mystique; why few people ever make claims about the reincarnation of someone who died in a mundane, or even less interestingly traumatic way, like a car crash, is something to consider.)
Anyway, the debunking article is worth reading. The thing that stood out most for me was the part about how the University of Virginia Health System funds a Division of Perceptual Studies (its mission: "Scientific Study of Extraordinary Experiences") - and how un-rigorous its director is (according to the debunker) in his methods.
posted by trig at 2:45 AM on May 3 [13 favorites]
I had a doppelganger in the city I lived in 20 years ago. Apparently he is an awful person. I had a few friends call me and ask what the hell was wrong with me, and recount stories of seeing me in town,being a creep when I was at home. I worked with his ex-wife, and she flinched everytime I walked into the same room.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 3:31 AM on May 3 [7 favorites]
posted by The Manwich Horror at 3:31 AM on May 3 [7 favorites]
When a child says something adults don't like, they are making up stories. When a child says something adults do like, they are a reincarnated oracle.
This clickbait bullshit annoys me so much because of how many kids aren't believed when they report something... unpleasant the adults in their lives are doing to them.
posted by AlSweigart at 3:39 AM on May 3 [22 favorites]
This clickbait bullshit annoys me so much because of how many kids aren't believed when they report something... unpleasant the adults in their lives are doing to them.
posted by AlSweigart at 3:39 AM on May 3 [22 favorites]
I've had the experience of having a woman come up to me in tears because I was a dead ringer for her dead brother. No claims of reincarnation, just a random (and rather awkward) experience.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:48 AM on May 3 [4 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:48 AM on May 3 [4 favorites]
I, too, have had a stranger or a child say something to me that made me go, like, whoa!
Probably isn't reincarnation, right? Still, it makes you wonder...... especially because it is definitely reincarnation
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 4:54 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
Probably isn't reincarnation, right? Still, it makes you wonder...... especially because it is definitely reincarnation
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 4:54 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
What happens when your toddler is haunted by memories that aren’t hers?
If you've got your head screwed on straight then you simply point out to yourself that these memories are hers because she is the one who is having them, and you help her deal with any upset they're causing her in the most compassionate, loving, caring and respectful fashion that you can because she is a toddler and you are her parent.
If you're fucked up Larkin style then you sweep aside the fact that the toddler in front of you has a life that is not your life, and start making up Just So stories in an ill-advised attempt to coerce her experience into your worldview no matter how poor a fit that is.
There are a lot of parents who really need to listen more and talk less.
posted by flabdablet at 5:00 AM on May 3 [21 favorites]
If you've got your head screwed on straight then you simply point out to yourself that these memories are hers because she is the one who is having them, and you help her deal with any upset they're causing her in the most compassionate, loving, caring and respectful fashion that you can because she is a toddler and you are her parent.
If you're fucked up Larkin style then you sweep aside the fact that the toddler in front of you has a life that is not your life, and start making up Just So stories in an ill-advised attempt to coerce her experience into your worldview no matter how poor a fit that is.
There are a lot of parents who really need to listen more and talk less.
posted by flabdablet at 5:00 AM on May 3 [21 favorites]
it is definitely reincarnation
Nah. Side effect of an alien anal probing for sure. Those things really fuck with the age of your soul.
posted by flabdablet at 5:02 AM on May 3 [4 favorites]
Nah. Side effect of an alien anal probing for sure. Those things really fuck with the age of your soul.
posted by flabdablet at 5:02 AM on May 3 [4 favorites]
Apologies in advance if I repeat myself here… When Little eirias was truly little, like 3 or so, she was verbal enough that we got a good view into her mind, and her naive ontology was totally wild. She appeared to “believe” in reincarnation, but not in the way that (white people?) assume. She thought that, just as she would grow up, we would grow down and be babies again. But more amusingly, she thought that it was totally plausible that she would grow up to be a cat and our cat would grow up to be a hosta. It was amazing and precious.
I told her (no longer little) about this article, about how some parents are convinced that their toddlers have been reincarnated, and her immediate response was, “Reincarnated from what?” Not “from whom.”
Amusement aside, I agree, though — what was this doing in the newspaper? Slow news year?
posted by eirias at 5:10 AM on May 3 [17 favorites]
I told her (no longer little) about this article, about how some parents are convinced that their toddlers have been reincarnated, and her immediate response was, “Reincarnated from what?” Not “from whom.”
Amusement aside, I agree, though — what was this doing in the newspaper? Slow news year?
posted by eirias at 5:10 AM on May 3 [17 favorites]
I once had a long conversation with a three-year-old about her adventures with her magic friend Harry and the bad boy Draco. I somehow suspect this had more to do with her Harry-Potter-obsessed older sisters than her past life as Hermione Granger.
Similarly, I'm guessing these kids' parents just don't realize the sound from their History Channel programs is carrying up into the nursery.
posted by nanny's striped stocking at 5:49 AM on May 3 [12 favorites]
Similarly, I'm guessing these kids' parents just don't realize the sound from their History Channel programs is carrying up into the nursery.
posted by nanny's striped stocking at 5:49 AM on May 3 [12 favorites]
My doppelganger is Ludwig II of Bavaria. My mom - who famously didn't recognize that my school had sent home photos of the wrong kid from graduation - sent me a photo of him and was all "OMG this is totally you" and, well, it was. Late teens to early 20s Ludwig and I were virtually indistinguishable! He didn't have any kids, though, so it is unlikely that we are distant relatives. It was fun to bring up his photo at parties and make his facial expression and see peoples' reactions.
For a moment people really, really thought I looked like Paul Rudd. As in, strangers yelled "I love you, man!" from jeeps and accosted me in coffee shops to let me know. That was a very brief window. I am a big Rush fan, so.
At my SIL's dental school graduation dinner, her mentor, a real toolshed of a man, said I looked like Roberto Benigni. That guy has since become persona non grata.
I also had a row with that same SIL over the Akiane Kramarik painting of "Jesus" after I mentioned that it looked a whole lot like Steve Carrell. And, upon some investigation, it looks even more like Jim Caviezel, who, like played Jesus in a bunch of films. It caused a real rift because I refused to believe! We have since made amends.
posted by grumpybear69 at 5:59 AM on May 3 [5 favorites]
For a moment people really, really thought I looked like Paul Rudd. As in, strangers yelled "I love you, man!" from jeeps and accosted me in coffee shops to let me know. That was a very brief window. I am a big Rush fan, so.
At my SIL's dental school graduation dinner, her mentor, a real toolshed of a man, said I looked like Roberto Benigni. That guy has since become persona non grata.
I also had a row with that same SIL over the Akiane Kramarik painting of "Jesus" after I mentioned that it looked a whole lot like Steve Carrell. And, upon some investigation, it looks even more like Jim Caviezel, who, like played Jesus in a bunch of films. It caused a real rift because I refused to believe! We have since made amends.
posted by grumpybear69 at 5:59 AM on May 3 [5 favorites]
I often find that Person X looks like Person Y, and then one year I realized that I think that because I don't really pay much attention to what people look like unless I know them well.
posted by JanetLand at 6:10 AM on May 3 [8 favorites]
posted by JanetLand at 6:10 AM on May 3 [8 favorites]
Do they have an explanation for why Nina speaks through Aija in English, a language that Aija knows but Nina presumably wouldn't have, rather than in whatever language Nina would have spoken? And doesn't it seem a little suspicious that the reincarnated people died in conflicts that are widely known in the US and widely understood to be traumatic, rather than in one of the other traumatic conflicts that is not our cultural go-to for violence and horror? I guess it's a step up from everyone being the reincarnation of Cleopatra, but it still feels a little convenient. And it seems like there could be explanations for freaky toddler behavior that aren't "this is normal imaginary friend stuff" and also aren't that your kid is the reincarnation of the guy from the Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:17 AM on May 3 [11 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:17 AM on May 3 [11 favorites]
I've recently been stepping out of my introvert comfort zone, participating in social things, and at various events I've had people do the "don't I know you from somewhere?" thing after being introduced. Part of me thinks it's a 'ice breaking' question but they do seem to be curious about why I'd look familiar.
One guy figured I looked like Anthony Edwards and that was good enough of an explanation for him.
If it were just once here and there, OK, but to have four different people at 4 different places do the same thing makes me wonder who's walking around looking like me, being all social and stuff.
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:26 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
One guy figured I looked like Anthony Edwards and that was good enough of an explanation for him.
If it were just once here and there, OK, but to have four different people at 4 different places do the same thing makes me wonder who's walking around looking like me, being all social and stuff.
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:26 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
Both of my kids did this.
My son talked a lot about falling off a boat and having to be put back together. At 3 years old, he was glad we were getting him swimming lessons because, "Next time, I'll be able to swim back to the boat." He referred to a woman called something like "the cheerleady" who had to find him and try to put him back together.
My daughter, also around age 3, had a diving man action figure she would play with in the tub. One night, she was having him jump into the bathtub and she would yell, "It's Bob Hamerton! Go Bob Hamerton!" It was such a weirdly specific name that we looked it up, and sure enough, Bob Hamerton was a Canadian swimmer who competed in the 1936 Olympics. Not someone famous enough that you would ever hear his name mentioned in passing.
Anyway, there's a lot of weird shit in this world that can't be easily or rationally explained. So maybe don't be a dick to people who are keeping an open mind about what might be going on, given that none of us can really know what happens after death until it happens to us.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 6:32 AM on May 3 [32 favorites]
My son talked a lot about falling off a boat and having to be put back together. At 3 years old, he was glad we were getting him swimming lessons because, "Next time, I'll be able to swim back to the boat." He referred to a woman called something like "the cheerleady" who had to find him and try to put him back together.
My daughter, also around age 3, had a diving man action figure she would play with in the tub. One night, she was having him jump into the bathtub and she would yell, "It's Bob Hamerton! Go Bob Hamerton!" It was such a weirdly specific name that we looked it up, and sure enough, Bob Hamerton was a Canadian swimmer who competed in the 1936 Olympics. Not someone famous enough that you would ever hear his name mentioned in passing.
Anyway, there's a lot of weird shit in this world that can't be easily or rationally explained. So maybe don't be a dick to people who are keeping an open mind about what might be going on, given that none of us can really know what happens after death until it happens to us.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 6:32 AM on May 3 [32 favorites]
"My kid was a WWII fighter pilot" just sounds so culturally mediated. It sounds like something parents in Louisiana would come up with. "I was a medieval peasant in Lithuania" or "I was harvesting rice in the Punjab" or "I was a woman tending my cassava plants in Africa" never seem to come up in these stories.
For that matter, where's the kid in Ghana saying "I was an insurance salesman from Omaha who died in a car accident in 1952"?
posted by gimonca at 6:36 AM on May 3 [27 favorites]
For that matter, where's the kid in Ghana saying "I was an insurance salesman from Omaha who died in a car accident in 1952"?
posted by gimonca at 6:36 AM on May 3 [27 favorites]
I mean, coincidences. Coincidences explain it. (re: things being inexplicable and being, perhaps, evidence of life after death or magic)
posted by sagc at 6:36 AM on May 3 [6 favorites]
posted by sagc at 6:36 AM on May 3 [6 favorites]
Anyway, I say none of this to brag in any way. I'm just pointing out, I don't look like "that other guy with long hair" in any way shape or form
This might not matter if people hyperfocus on the hair as a signifier. I was once mistaken for the only other person at a conference who was using a mobility scooter. I was a white woman in my 40s; she was a grey-haired Black woman in her 60s. Apparently all this person saw was the scooter.
posted by Well I never at 6:37 AM on May 3 [11 favorites]
This might not matter if people hyperfocus on the hair as a signifier. I was once mistaken for the only other person at a conference who was using a mobility scooter. I was a white woman in my 40s; she was a grey-haired Black woman in her 60s. Apparently all this person saw was the scooter.
posted by Well I never at 6:37 AM on May 3 [11 favorites]
The doppleganger thing is real though.
Given how many people say, "you know you look like ____" to people, and have them bear NO resemblance to that person, combined with the very weak ability of humans to remember faces, I'm going to say this is also probably not that real.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:37 AM on May 3 [7 favorites]
Given how many people say, "you know you look like ____" to people, and have them bear NO resemblance to that person, combined with the very weak ability of humans to remember faces, I'm going to say this is also probably not that real.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:37 AM on May 3 [7 favorites]
I've been bald since I was 17 (now 35), and if there's one thing I can say about the general public, it's that to most people, all bald guys look the same. I am frequently greeted as a long-lost familiar by people I've never met in my life, but I'd err toward the side of people just subconsciously using their bald guy heuristic rather than anything spiritual.
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 6:38 AM on May 3 [7 favorites]
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 6:38 AM on May 3 [7 favorites]
All bald men are time-looping reincarnations of each other.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 6:39 AM on May 3 [10 favorites]
posted by paper chromatographologist at 6:39 AM on May 3 [10 favorites]
Literally only one bald person has ever existed, and it's you, Kaiju Commuter
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:41 AM on May 3 [14 favorites]
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:41 AM on May 3 [14 favorites]
Well, shit. I'm sold.
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 6:41 AM on May 3 [11 favorites]
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 6:41 AM on May 3 [11 favorites]
By the time kids are able to speak, I'm guessing they've absorbed a TON of media content completely out of context and their brain is finally processing that.
Like, here's the thing with me: I believe in reincarnation, or rather I hope in it. But I also believe that it's part of a life force of the universe and that life here on Earth is just one instance of life in this universe. So when you're reincarnated, the chances of you being reincarnated as another human out of all the other billions upon billions upon billions of lifeforms in the galaxy is, while non-zero, approaching zero. I think we can remember past lives for a while, but because our past life might have been as some giant floating gas-bag-type-being living in the clouds of a Jovian planet on the other side of the universe we can't actually conceptualize that reality with our language and brains made here on Earth.
My ideas are probably not true, but I like to believe them for fun.
posted by snwod at 6:42 AM on May 3 [12 favorites]
Like, here's the thing with me: I believe in reincarnation, or rather I hope in it. But I also believe that it's part of a life force of the universe and that life here on Earth is just one instance of life in this universe. So when you're reincarnated, the chances of you being reincarnated as another human out of all the other billions upon billions upon billions of lifeforms in the galaxy is, while non-zero, approaching zero. I think we can remember past lives for a while, but because our past life might have been as some giant floating gas-bag-type-being living in the clouds of a Jovian planet on the other side of the universe we can't actually conceptualize that reality with our language and brains made here on Earth.
My ideas are probably not true, but I like to believe them for fun.
posted by snwod at 6:42 AM on May 3 [12 favorites]
For that matter, where's the kid in Ghana saying "I was an insurance salesman from Omaha who died in a car accident in 1952"?
It would be kind of grimly hilarious to find out there's a kid in rural Normandy or Osaka or wherever who just won't shut up about determining COBRA eligibility and how to optimize your HSA usage.
posted by nanny's striped stocking at 6:45 AM on May 3 [34 favorites]
It would be kind of grimly hilarious to find out there's a kid in rural Normandy or Osaka or wherever who just won't shut up about determining COBRA eligibility and how to optimize your HSA usage.
posted by nanny's striped stocking at 6:45 AM on May 3 [34 favorites]
I've seen a handful of people who look eerily like people I knew back in NYC
I have slowly come to understand that I have a kind of face blindness that causes me to over-identify people. The existence of IMDB has helped me understand this about myself. I'm always seeing an actor I recognize in a TV show or movie, but when I check IMDB, nothing they were ever in rings a bell for me. In the early days, I thought it was a lack of data but I've come to understand that it's me somehow thinking I've seen a new face before. Maybe it's driven by an unconscious desire to make order out of things.
After accepting this as a thing that happened for me with famous people, I've realized it happens in my life as well.
The other day, I was watching an old movie, and it had an actor in it who made me ask, "Wait, is that Christopher Meloni from Law & Order?" It wasn't, but even after I'd checked IMDB, I couldn't convince my brain of it. If I looked at pictures of the two actors side by side, I could tell them apart, and also see the similarities that were leading me astray. But I couldn't even get myself, in the movie, with no picture of Meloni to hold up beside the screen, to ever see this other actor as himself.
People like me, because I can't be the only one, surely underlie some doppelganger reports, and also unlikely celebrity sightings.
posted by Well I never at 6:46 AM on May 3 [7 favorites]
I have slowly come to understand that I have a kind of face blindness that causes me to over-identify people. The existence of IMDB has helped me understand this about myself. I'm always seeing an actor I recognize in a TV show or movie, but when I check IMDB, nothing they were ever in rings a bell for me. In the early days, I thought it was a lack of data but I've come to understand that it's me somehow thinking I've seen a new face before. Maybe it's driven by an unconscious desire to make order out of things.
After accepting this as a thing that happened for me with famous people, I've realized it happens in my life as well.
The other day, I was watching an old movie, and it had an actor in it who made me ask, "Wait, is that Christopher Meloni from Law & Order?" It wasn't, but even after I'd checked IMDB, I couldn't convince my brain of it. If I looked at pictures of the two actors side by side, I could tell them apart, and also see the similarities that were leading me astray. But I couldn't even get myself, in the movie, with no picture of Meloni to hold up beside the screen, to ever see this other actor as himself.
People like me, because I can't be the only one, surely underlie some doppelganger reports, and also unlikely celebrity sightings.
posted by Well I never at 6:46 AM on May 3 [7 favorites]
I mean, if my cat (who has a serious illness 😿) might could come back as a hosta, after he dies I know what I’m buying at the next native plant sale.
posted by eirias at 6:46 AM on May 3 [12 favorites]
posted by eirias at 6:46 AM on May 3 [12 favorites]
I am far enough outside the standard that I'm not easily confused with others. I have a pretty distinctive longer beard and a tendency to wear certain kinds of hats and caps and to dress in a rather specific way.
Years and years ago, I saw either you or your doppleganger at the Full Sail brewery in Hood River. And, your doppleganger was sitting with another dude who looked fairly similar as well, with the same long beard and flannel shirt but somewhat different facial features. They were having a close conversation so I didn't butt in to be the weird "hey, are you on the interrnet?" guy, but it did make me wonder.
Back in my 20s and 30s, I was always being confused for other people. I think at that age I fit neatly into a generic "tall white guy with short hair" slot in people's minds. And then in my mid/late 30s, that just stopped and hasn't happened since. I feel like I look the same (well, older, but similar) but whatever it was that caused people to come up and ask if I was so-and-so simply stopped.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:47 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
Years and years ago, I saw either you or your doppleganger at the Full Sail brewery in Hood River. And, your doppleganger was sitting with another dude who looked fairly similar as well, with the same long beard and flannel shirt but somewhat different facial features. They were having a close conversation so I didn't butt in to be the weird "hey, are you on the interrnet?" guy, but it did make me wonder.
Back in my 20s and 30s, I was always being confused for other people. I think at that age I fit neatly into a generic "tall white guy with short hair" slot in people's minds. And then in my mid/late 30s, that just stopped and hasn't happened since. I feel like I look the same (well, older, but similar) but whatever it was that caused people to come up and ask if I was so-and-so simply stopped.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:47 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
I was watching an old movie, and it had an actor in it who made me ask, "Wait, is that Christopher Meloni from Law & Order?"
How old a movie was it? Because I always get Meloni mixed up with Elias Koteas (unless it’s an episode of Law & Order).
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:56 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
How old a movie was it? Because I always get Meloni mixed up with Elias Koteas (unless it’s an episode of Law & Order).
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:56 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
I recently mixed up Elias Koteas with Christopher Meloni while watching the Denzel Washington movie Fallen.
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 7:01 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 7:01 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
I also once met a woman who insisted I had a doppelgänger. She insisted that I must be this person and eventually dropped it but for the rest of our meal she kept looking at me like she thought I was lying about who I was. This time, though, I knew who she was talking about and I can attest that she was just wrong. I do NOT look like Maggie Gyllenhaal. She was just wrong. And if you ever read this, strange lady, I’m sorry to ruin your story about how you once met Maggie Gyllenhaal staying at a B&B under a false name.
posted by bq at 7:08 AM on May 3 [4 favorites]
posted by bq at 7:08 AM on May 3 [4 favorites]
The Pluto Gangsta, The KaijuCommuter: I don't feel so alone in my own constant switching of those two actors!
posted by Kitteh at 7:08 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
posted by Kitteh at 7:08 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
As a side note, this is a plot device of the very lovely Korean show See you in my 19th Life. The main character Ban Ji-eum gets the memories of every one of her previous lives on 9th birthday. It's quite a lovely story about learning to let go of the past.
That aside, while reading the article I kept wanting to have someone interview a kid that it had happened to. Your memories are fuzzy and weird before a certain age and I was hoping we'd get some perspective of a kid who retained the memories or at least remembered them. Sadly we didn't which makes me feel like it's more in the "interesting and weird shit human brains do while growing" and less in the reincarnation category.
posted by teleri025 at 7:11 AM on May 3 [3 favorites]
That aside, while reading the article I kept wanting to have someone interview a kid that it had happened to. Your memories are fuzzy and weird before a certain age and I was hoping we'd get some perspective of a kid who retained the memories or at least remembered them. Sadly we didn't which makes me feel like it's more in the "interesting and weird shit human brains do while growing" and less in the reincarnation category.
posted by teleri025 at 7:11 AM on May 3 [3 favorites]
My mother sometimes tells me that when I was very young, about three or so, I refused to eat some french fries because they looked to me like "guys I knew all bloody lying in the sand with guns and bombs all around". This happened about 1974. After that, I started talking about these "guys" occasionally, always a little sad about them.
Not exactly hard evidence, of course, but makes for entertaining after-dinner conversation.
posted by somebodystrousers at 7:19 AM on May 3 [5 favorites]
Not exactly hard evidence, of course, but makes for entertaining after-dinner conversation.
posted by somebodystrousers at 7:19 AM on May 3 [5 favorites]
To me more clear and less pithy, my supposed doppelganger looked nothing like me, except we were both white teenagers with long brown hair and glasses. We weren't even the same height or body type.
posted by muddgirl at 7:20 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
posted by muddgirl at 7:20 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
hi everyone, i'm bombastic lowercase pronouncements and this is my woo.
so let's talk about the concept of boltzmann brains and the related concept of boltzmann universes. a note before we start properly: boltzmann brains are not my woo, and i'm kind of uninterested in arguing about the mathematical plausibility or whatever behind the boltzmann brain thought experiment — which is as i see it functionally equivalent to arguing about the plausibility of the simulationist hypothesis, which is another thing that is not my woo and which is (though most simulationists aren't smart enough to realize it) functionally equivalent to the boltzmann brain hypothesis.
you've probably already clicked the wikipedia link and whatever it says there is probably better than the description i'm going to give off the top of my head, but basically the boltzmann brain hypothesis is that it is more likely (or even vastly more likely) that random fluctuations will by chance produce a fully functioning human brain with memories and everything than it is for the entire actual universe to develop through predictable orderly processes. any given person (even you! yes, you!) is more likely to be a bunch of particles that out of a surfeit of unearned and explanationless chance just so happened to drift together and become a brain that thinks it lives in a more-or-less orderly universe than it is for that universe to exist.
relatedly, there's also the concept (a more interesting concept, i think) of the boltzmann universe. this extends the boltzmann brain hypothesis to cover the entire universe. just as it's more likely that a brain that has memories and everything will spring into existence through chance than it is for a universe that can support orderly processes allowing for the development of brains to happen, it's more likely that the universe itself has suddenly sprung into existence than it is for it to have developed in any predictable rationalish way. okay i'm going to look back at the wikipedia article now, because really it probably explains it better than i can. okay, quoting:
and like i enjoy harvesting these deeply oddball ideas cause i like being outré but also because i'm absolutely dogged by that sense of radical epistemological/ontological uncertainty, uncertainty that cannot be shaken by any sort of evidence whatsoever due to how it that radical e/o uncertainty immediately devours and destroys any coherent concept of "evidence", because of all that weird shit like parmenides's "way of truth" seems way more plausible than anything that appears to be a rational description of a rational universe that in any way matches what we think of as the evidence of our senses.
so when someone says that god exists or that a baby is reincarnated or that the earth orbits the sun or does astrology or haruspicy or says that oxygen was discovered in 1774 or that little bugs dig in the mud or that the future is related to the present or past or that the future exists or that the past exists or that the present exists or that god was a man who was killed and rose again and he oh so loved the world or that the centuries between that event and now are a spurious invention of a satellite named valis or that crystals have power or that green grass grows on the grassy green ground i have positively no means of sorting out any of those claims or assessing them for validity or anything like that.
really it's a miracle i can even manage to get dressed in the morning or cross the street without getting flattened by trucks, a miracle roughly on par with the miracle of particles by total chance drifting together to form a brain with memories of living in a universe or for random fluctuations of particles to produce a universe that appears to have a history.
this really is a woo, and if you don't think it's a woo it is at the very least a meta-woo, because when presented with someone else's woo i have no available means of assessing it as something to accept or dismiss on rational grounds, because rational grounds are in the interpretive framework that i have found myself irrevocably stuck in are themselves an insane idea, since it is completely impossible to make any sort of rationally grounded claim about the universe whatsoever. all i can say is whether or not i find a given woo pretty. my woo is a love of pretty woo. can i rationally explain what woo is pretty and what woo is not? lol, that's something for people who aren't forever hovering in a state of unshakeable epistemological/ontological uncertainty, and if you're looking for that you're not looking for me.
so please, friends: give me your prettiest woo, and please, if you could, don't justify it at all, because justifying things is impossible and often ugly too and i promise you i won't believe your woo, i won't, if it's lovely woo i won't believe it but i'll love it, and the only reason i won't believe this lovely thing you brought me that i love is because i can't believe anything other than that it's so strange to be anything at all.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:26 AM on May 3 [19 favorites]
so let's talk about the concept of boltzmann brains and the related concept of boltzmann universes. a note before we start properly: boltzmann brains are not my woo, and i'm kind of uninterested in arguing about the mathematical plausibility or whatever behind the boltzmann brain thought experiment — which is as i see it functionally equivalent to arguing about the plausibility of the simulationist hypothesis, which is another thing that is not my woo and which is (though most simulationists aren't smart enough to realize it) functionally equivalent to the boltzmann brain hypothesis.
you've probably already clicked the wikipedia link and whatever it says there is probably better than the description i'm going to give off the top of my head, but basically the boltzmann brain hypothesis is that it is more likely (or even vastly more likely) that random fluctuations will by chance produce a fully functioning human brain with memories and everything than it is for the entire actual universe to develop through predictable orderly processes. any given person (even you! yes, you!) is more likely to be a bunch of particles that out of a surfeit of unearned and explanationless chance just so happened to drift together and become a brain that thinks it lives in a more-or-less orderly universe than it is for that universe to exist.
relatedly, there's also the concept (a more interesting concept, i think) of the boltzmann universe. this extends the boltzmann brain hypothesis to cover the entire universe. just as it's more likely that a brain that has memories and everything will spring into existence through chance than it is for a universe that can support orderly processes allowing for the development of brains to happen, it's more likely that the universe itself has suddenly sprung into existence than it is for it to have developed in any predictable rationalish way. okay i'm going to look back at the wikipedia article now, because really it probably explains it better than i can. okay, quoting:
In this scenario, the universe spends the vast majority of eternity in a featureless state of heat death; however, over enough eons, eventually a very rare thermal fluctuation will occur where atoms bounce off each other in exactly such a way as to form a substructure equivalent to our entire observable universe. Boltzmann argues that, while most of the universe is featureless, humans do not see those regions because they are devoid of intelligent life; to Boltzmann, it is unremarkable that humanity views solely the interior of its Boltzmann universe, as that is the only place where intelligent life lives. (This may be the first use in modern science of the anthropic principle).my woo is not the boltzmann universe. the boltzmann universe is a good way to point toward my woo, though. my woo is total epistemological uncertainty, inescapable total epistemological uncertainty, epistemological uncertainty so omni-lysing that it passes epistemological uncertainty and becomes episto-ontological uncertainty. sometimes i try to get at this by harvesting the most bonkers metaphysical speculations from the history of philosophy. my favorite is still parmenides's radical monist stance — he asserts that the concepts of motion, change, void, feature, multiplicity, time, difference, and so forth are all self-contradictory, and that therefore there is exactly one thing that exists, and that it has no features, it never changes, it has no center, it has no edges, and i'd say all it does is hang around and vibe, but vibin' would be a feature and so it doesn't even do that. and if anyone says that anything but this one featureless endless unchanging thing exists, that's just, like, their opinion, man. (okay but no really he calls the interpretation of the universe as one featureless unchanging thing as "the way of truth" and the hypothesis that anything at all else exists as "the way of opinion").
and like i enjoy harvesting these deeply oddball ideas cause i like being outré but also because i'm absolutely dogged by that sense of radical epistemological/ontological uncertainty, uncertainty that cannot be shaken by any sort of evidence whatsoever due to how it that radical e/o uncertainty immediately devours and destroys any coherent concept of "evidence", because of all that weird shit like parmenides's "way of truth" seems way more plausible than anything that appears to be a rational description of a rational universe that in any way matches what we think of as the evidence of our senses.
so when someone says that god exists or that a baby is reincarnated or that the earth orbits the sun or does astrology or haruspicy or says that oxygen was discovered in 1774 or that little bugs dig in the mud or that the future is related to the present or past or that the future exists or that the past exists or that the present exists or that god was a man who was killed and rose again and he oh so loved the world or that the centuries between that event and now are a spurious invention of a satellite named valis or that crystals have power or that green grass grows on the grassy green ground i have positively no means of sorting out any of those claims or assessing them for validity or anything like that.
really it's a miracle i can even manage to get dressed in the morning or cross the street without getting flattened by trucks, a miracle roughly on par with the miracle of particles by total chance drifting together to form a brain with memories of living in a universe or for random fluctuations of particles to produce a universe that appears to have a history.
this really is a woo, and if you don't think it's a woo it is at the very least a meta-woo, because when presented with someone else's woo i have no available means of assessing it as something to accept or dismiss on rational grounds, because rational grounds are in the interpretive framework that i have found myself irrevocably stuck in are themselves an insane idea, since it is completely impossible to make any sort of rationally grounded claim about the universe whatsoever. all i can say is whether or not i find a given woo pretty. my woo is a love of pretty woo. can i rationally explain what woo is pretty and what woo is not? lol, that's something for people who aren't forever hovering in a state of unshakeable epistemological/ontological uncertainty, and if you're looking for that you're not looking for me.
so please, friends: give me your prettiest woo, and please, if you could, don't justify it at all, because justifying things is impossible and often ugly too and i promise you i won't believe your woo, i won't, if it's lovely woo i won't believe it but i'll love it, and the only reason i won't believe this lovely thing you brought me that i love is because i can't believe anything other than that it's so strange to be anything at all.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:26 AM on May 3 [19 favorites]
p.s. don't @ me about ripping off song lyrics they're really good song lyrics okay??
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:27 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:27 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
I know the legacy media is in a weird place these days but what the heck is this doing in a newspaper?
Me: OMG it's in a newspaper?!? Which one? [hovers] ... eyeroll emoji x the universe
I knew I was right to drop fucking WaPo when shortly after the strike they started serving up wrinklecure stories in the "Post Most." To what should I subscribe, though? I get the Baltimore Banner, now, but just to subscribe to something unionfriendly as a kind of palate cleanser. It's pretty much useless for national news and I don't, in point of fact, live anywhere near Baltimore.
posted by Don Pepino at 7:33 AM on May 3
Me: OMG it's in a newspaper?!? Which one? [hovers] ... eyeroll emoji x the universe
I knew I was right to drop fucking WaPo when shortly after the strike they started serving up wrinklecure stories in the "Post Most." To what should I subscribe, though? I get the Baltimore Banner, now, but just to subscribe to something unionfriendly as a kind of palate cleanser. It's pretty much useless for national news and I don't, in point of fact, live anywhere near Baltimore.
posted by Don Pepino at 7:33 AM on May 3
My partner's had a fear of the death of loved ones for most of her life. She's also generally a very evidence-based, scientifically-focused person. She found one of Jim Tucker's books a couple of years ago and it's brought her a little bit of relief from that fear. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.
posted by hanov3r at 7:49 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
posted by hanov3r at 7:49 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
About UFOs - secret revolutionary aviation tech is literally a thing that has happened multiple times in the past 125 years. There being spacefaring aliens somewhere among the septillion odd planets of the observable universe is nearly certain. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to be curious when a command pilot with 5,000 hours says "hey, I saw a thing I've never seen before and can't easily explain it.
This is just not in the order of magnitude of entertaining little kids being reincarnations or having some racial memory or transmissible quantum memory of other people's past lives. Kids brains can develop in odd ways, and are particularly prone to imagination and suggestion.
(My doppelganger is a Persian Jewish real estate guy on the North Shore of Long Island, which is weird considering I'm mostly Irish. Some various acquaintance or colleague of his has stopped me on the streets of Manhattan several times over the past 20 years, and any time I'm in Great Neck or Manhasset there's a good chance a restaurant hostess or convenience store clerk will give me these long confused stares before he or she figures out I'm not him.)
posted by MattD at 7:56 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
This is just not in the order of magnitude of entertaining little kids being reincarnations or having some racial memory or transmissible quantum memory of other people's past lives. Kids brains can develop in odd ways, and are particularly prone to imagination and suggestion.
(My doppelganger is a Persian Jewish real estate guy on the North Shore of Long Island, which is weird considering I'm mostly Irish. Some various acquaintance or colleague of his has stopped me on the streets of Manhattan several times over the past 20 years, and any time I'm in Great Neck or Manhasset there's a good chance a restaurant hostess or convenience store clerk will give me these long confused stares before he or she figures out I'm not him.)
posted by MattD at 7:56 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
People like me, because I can't be the only one, surely underlie some doppelganger reports, and also unlikely celebrity sightings.
Given that there are at least two of us in this thread alone, it must be very common to be the sort of person who watches a movie and thinks, "This actor is so-and-so. Wait IMDB says it's somebody else. Well, this actor looks A LOT like so-and-so. Huh. Nobody else I know sees the resemblance. I'm doing that thing again."
I do it with real people sometimes too. My theory is that my brain sees/invents resemblances in the kinds of facial expressions two people make and if they have the slightest physical resemblance decides they are "the same."
On behalf of my people I apologize to hippybear and everyone else we annoy with our "You look just like...!" nonsense.
posted by straight at 8:01 AM on May 3 [4 favorites]
Given that there are at least two of us in this thread alone, it must be very common to be the sort of person who watches a movie and thinks, "This actor is so-and-so. Wait IMDB says it's somebody else. Well, this actor looks A LOT like so-and-so. Huh. Nobody else I know sees the resemblance. I'm doing that thing again."
I do it with real people sometimes too. My theory is that my brain sees/invents resemblances in the kinds of facial expressions two people make and if they have the slightest physical resemblance decides they are "the same."
On behalf of my people I apologize to hippybear and everyone else we annoy with our "You look just like...!" nonsense.
posted by straight at 8:01 AM on May 3 [4 favorites]
On behalf of my people I apologize to hippybear and everyone else we annoy with our "You look just like...!" nonsense.
Listen, as a person who has repeatedly described people as "looking just like______" to the utter confusion of my friends and has been rightly mortified several times in my adulthood after misidentifying a person, talking --at length--to them as if they were the other person, and having conversation curtailed by And who exactly do you think I am again? It is possible reports of your doppelgangers have been exaggerated by me and other people with a smidge of face blindness.
posted by thivaia at 8:13 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
I know the legacy media is in a weird place these days but what the heck is this doing in a newspaper?
Legacy admissions?
That impression is echoed by Tom Shroder, a former Washington Post editor and author of “Old Souls: Compelling Evidence From Children Who Remember Past Lives,” who accompanied Stevenson as he studied cases in Lebanon and India.
posted by Selena777 at 8:36 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
Legacy admissions?
That impression is echoed by Tom Shroder, a former Washington Post editor and author of “Old Souls: Compelling Evidence From Children Who Remember Past Lives,” who accompanied Stevenson as he studied cases in Lebanon and India.
posted by Selena777 at 8:36 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
From the debunking link shared (abstract / full pdf):
But the Blue Angels video is relevant for another reason. The Leiningers emphasize many of James’s claims and behavior related to general aviation as evidence of his having lived a previous life. For example, by the time James was four years old, he had expressed a desire to fly an “F-18 Hornet” and be a “slot pilot” (SS, p. 127), was able to identify the tailhook as a distinctive feature of naval planes (SS, p. 130), could mimic settling into a cockpit, including adjusting the headgear (SS, p. 126–27), and bringing himself to attention and saluting (SS, p. 120). The Leiningers regard these items as atypical for a child his age and suggestive of an old soul inhabiting James’s body, a soul intimately familiar with aviation.posted by spamandkimchi at 8:50 AM on May 3 [9 favorites]
...
—All of the claims and behaviors the Leiningers attribute to James (above) as something ostensibly remarkable and for which they could identify no normal source are either mentioned or visually represented in the [1994 Around the World at the Speed of Sound Blue Angels, purchased by the parents at the aviation museum for their kid but subsequently lost] video, some nearly a dozen times—for example, the naval salute, carrier landings, fighter planes with tail hooks, and aviation terminology such as “slot pilot.”
—There is a 10-minute segment on WW2 that discusses the connection between WW2 and the Blue Angels, including a specific reference to the war in the Pacific and the importance of naval carriers to that aspect of the war. This segment includes archival footage of fighter planes landing on carriers (e.g., AT-6 Texan) with tailhooks visible, images and archival footage of Grumman F6F Hellcats (a prominent fighter plane in the latter part of the war in the Pacific), and it emphasizes how some of the first Blue Angel pilots were war heroes of WW2 (Atkeison, 2020, 0:14:40–0:23:00).
— A pilot named Larsen appears in this video (name on screen), the pilot of the Blue Angels equipment transport plane, a Lockheed C-130 named after the children’s television show Fat Albert (Atkeison, 2020, 0:52:42–0:54:00). Recall that James allegedly gave the name Larsen as the name of a pilot who appeared in his dreams.
omg I have not RTFAs yet but this thread is so amazing!!
I have traveled a number of woo corridors in my life, so I feel I have earned my skepticism. I am generally disinclined to woo these days. I don't think I have a pretty woo to offer bombastic.
I think it boils down to something quite simple: we are all so afraid of dying. not the dying part itself, only, but the BEING GONE part. when I personally think about being dead I get annoyed because I won't get to find out WHAT HAPPENS!!!!! what happens next?? I'll never know cause I'll be dead.
and the deaths of loved ones, we fear and dread so much. any comforting port in that storm can be tempting. afterlife? dad's in heaven? we will live again in a reincarnated lifetime? it's all a panicked ego fear of disappearing. these people have it so bad they have voided their own child's identity and made it a spectacle.
if there is in fact "something more" "god" whatever, do you really think that when you die that little divine spark, your soul, whatever, will retain its individuated self identity? will remain coherent and retain your memories and dreams? that's just ridiculous. sorry, I don't like it either.
posted by supermedusa at 9:32 AM on May 3 [8 favorites]
I have traveled a number of woo corridors in my life, so I feel I have earned my skepticism. I am generally disinclined to woo these days. I don't think I have a pretty woo to offer bombastic.
I think it boils down to something quite simple: we are all so afraid of dying. not the dying part itself, only, but the BEING GONE part. when I personally think about being dead I get annoyed because I won't get to find out WHAT HAPPENS!!!!! what happens next?? I'll never know cause I'll be dead.
and the deaths of loved ones, we fear and dread so much. any comforting port in that storm can be tempting. afterlife? dad's in heaven? we will live again in a reincarnated lifetime? it's all a panicked ego fear of disappearing. these people have it so bad they have voided their own child's identity and made it a spectacle.
if there is in fact "something more" "god" whatever, do you really think that when you die that little divine spark, your soul, whatever, will retain its individuated self identity? will remain coherent and retain your memories and dreams? that's just ridiculous. sorry, I don't like it either.
posted by supermedusa at 9:32 AM on May 3 [8 favorites]
I think I've described this before, but a few years ago an ex-girlfriend bumped into me at JFK and we had a typical not-seen-you-for-ages short conversation, mentioning mutual friends, before we went our separate ways. Except I was in France at the time.
posted by Hogshead at 9:35 AM on May 3 [7 favorites]
posted by Hogshead at 9:35 AM on May 3 [7 favorites]
so let's talk about the concept of boltzmann brains and the related concept of boltzmann universes.
The Boltzmann brain appears as a semi-recurring character in some of the Tom The Dancing Bug comic strips.
posted by JDC8 at 9:35 AM on May 3 [4 favorites]
The Boltzmann brain appears as a semi-recurring character in some of the Tom The Dancing Bug comic strips.
posted by JDC8 at 9:35 AM on May 3 [4 favorites]
Except I was in France at the time.
Bilocation -- nice! One more miracle and you've got chance at sainthood.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 9:44 AM on May 3 [9 favorites]
Bilocation -- nice! One more miracle and you've got chance at sainthood.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 9:44 AM on May 3 [9 favorites]
My children both said things like this and I wondered. My toddler granddaughter wakes up crying and expresses great worries about her children, which is unsettling, but then when she's awake she worries about her children as well - that is, when she's not gleefully throwing them around the living room. They don't mind; they're plastic.
Still, I don't discount reincarnation. Everything is reincarnated in a way, nothing is wasted, your bones and flesh and hair grow down into the ground, become roots, become soil, get eaten, get shat out and seeds carried with them, plants grow, they die, bit by slow bit they become stone and so do you. Maybe a fragment of consciousness goes with them, a tiny spark, a bit. I wouldn't mind spending eternity as a lump of dirt or a tree or a rock or even a dandelion, endlessly reborn. Maybe your consciousness isn't finite either but does fly off to get reused whole or in parts, on this planet or another.*
*hat tip to snwod, I used to think I was the only person who thought about reincarnation on other planets but clearly it is not just me!
posted by mygothlaundry at 10:00 AM on May 3 [3 favorites]
Still, I don't discount reincarnation. Everything is reincarnated in a way, nothing is wasted, your bones and flesh and hair grow down into the ground, become roots, become soil, get eaten, get shat out and seeds carried with them, plants grow, they die, bit by slow bit they become stone and so do you. Maybe a fragment of consciousness goes with them, a tiny spark, a bit. I wouldn't mind spending eternity as a lump of dirt or a tree or a rock or even a dandelion, endlessly reborn. Maybe your consciousness isn't finite either but does fly off to get reused whole or in parts, on this planet or another.*
*hat tip to snwod, I used to think I was the only person who thought about reincarnation on other planets but clearly it is not just me!
posted by mygothlaundry at 10:00 AM on May 3 [3 favorites]
The doppleganger thing is real though.
Oh definitely. I walked into a Kay-Bees Toys, as a grown-ass adult who collects toys, and who do I see in one isle, but a man around my age with my exact face. To this day I WISH I'd gone up to him and asked who he was, but I was sufficiently freaked out that I left the store immediately, so strong and uncanny was the resemblance.
posted by UltraMorgnus at 10:13 AM on May 3
Oh definitely. I walked into a Kay-Bees Toys, as a grown-ass adult who collects toys, and who do I see in one isle, but a man around my age with my exact face. To this day I WISH I'd gone up to him and asked who he was, but I was sufficiently freaked out that I left the store immediately, so strong and uncanny was the resemblance.
posted by UltraMorgnus at 10:13 AM on May 3
New doppelganger theory - given that consumer DNA testing is revealing the shocking prevalence of both NPEs and children of incest, it's maybe better NOT to approach a doppleganger unless you're ready for a life changing conversation.
posted by muddgirl at 10:30 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
posted by muddgirl at 10:30 AM on May 3 [2 favorites]
I’ve been mistaken for a couple of different celebrities in my life. These celebrities don’t even look alike. In one case a person was actually mad that I refused to acknowledge their id saying something like, “I get that you guys want to be left alone, but you don’t have to he a jerk and pretend I’m wrong.”
posted by interogative mood at 10:42 AM on May 3 [3 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 10:42 AM on May 3 [3 favorites]
parmenides's radical monist stance — he asserts that the concepts of motion, change, void, feature, multiplicity, time, difference, and so forth are all self-contradictory, and that therefore there is exactly one thing that exists, and that it has no features, it never changes, it has no center, it has no edges, and i'd say all it does is hang around and vibe, but vibin' would be a feature and so it doesn't even do that. and if anyone says that anything but this one featureless endless unchanging thing exists, that's just, like, their opinion, man. (okay but no really he calls the interpretation of the universe as one featureless unchanging thing as "the way of truth" and the hypothesis that anything at all else exists as "the way of opinion").
Not radical enough for me. Not by half.
Way I see it, all of those specific descriptive claims (no features, never changes, no centre, no edges) are a bunch of Just So stories that Parmenides happened to like and didn't have the internal discipline required to stop before beginning to expound upon.
We can certainly conceptualize the universe as a single thing, simply by defining the word "universe" to refer to the whole within which every thing is included. But the only supportable claim about that thing, in and of itself, is that it is.
As soon as we wish to make some kind of claim about how it is, we need to start defining words that refer to things that are not identical to the universe or we just get nowhere. Those things will be parts and/or aspects of the universe (i.e. things included within it, per our first definition) and may well include concepts such as feature, change, centre, edge and so forth.
Making a word refer to any thing not identical to the universe requires specifying distinction criteria to distinguish that thing from all that it is not. The universe itself, being all-inclusive, is the only thing that admits of a definition without such criteria.
Asserting that the universe does not have attributes such as change, as your version of Parmenides appears to favour doing, is both a much stronger and far more dubious claim than the one I prefer, which is simply that sometimes it is both useful and pleasant not to care whether it does or it doesn't. When all are one and one is all, to be a rock and not to roll.
posted by flabdablet at 10:54 AM on May 3 [3 favorites]
Not radical enough for me. Not by half.
Way I see it, all of those specific descriptive claims (no features, never changes, no centre, no edges) are a bunch of Just So stories that Parmenides happened to like and didn't have the internal discipline required to stop before beginning to expound upon.
We can certainly conceptualize the universe as a single thing, simply by defining the word "universe" to refer to the whole within which every thing is included. But the only supportable claim about that thing, in and of itself, is that it is.
As soon as we wish to make some kind of claim about how it is, we need to start defining words that refer to things that are not identical to the universe or we just get nowhere. Those things will be parts and/or aspects of the universe (i.e. things included within it, per our first definition) and may well include concepts such as feature, change, centre, edge and so forth.
Making a word refer to any thing not identical to the universe requires specifying distinction criteria to distinguish that thing from all that it is not. The universe itself, being all-inclusive, is the only thing that admits of a definition without such criteria.
Asserting that the universe does not have attributes such as change, as your version of Parmenides appears to favour doing, is both a much stronger and far more dubious claim than the one I prefer, which is simply that sometimes it is both useful and pleasant not to care whether it does or it doesn't. When all are one and one is all, to be a rock and not to roll.
posted by flabdablet at 10:54 AM on May 3 [3 favorites]
ctrl-f "hyperlexia"
0/0
Some of these stories tend to center around "how could this three-year-old know about [x]." Maybe your kid can already read, or is just picking up stuff off of YouTube? I sure knew a lot more as a very young child than what happened to be on late-sixties TV, thanks to the set of The New Book of Knowledge encyclopedias that my parents bought and that I used to read as if they were comics (which I also read).
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:54 AM on May 3 [7 favorites]
0/0
Some of these stories tend to center around "how could this three-year-old know about [x]." Maybe your kid can already read, or is just picking up stuff off of YouTube? I sure knew a lot more as a very young child than what happened to be on late-sixties TV, thanks to the set of The New Book of Knowledge encyclopedias that my parents bought and that I used to read as if they were comics (which I also read).
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:54 AM on May 3 [7 favorites]
a man around my age with my exact face
As seen how? Mirror or photo?
posted by flabdablet at 10:59 AM on May 3
As seen how? Mirror or photo?
posted by flabdablet at 10:59 AM on May 3
Hah. I saw a doppelgänger for my dad last week, now that I think on it. Which was very very weird as he is dead. The doppelgänger was walking toward me in the hallway at the retirement community in which my dad spent his final years. I did a triple take. I must have looked very rude. I assume my experience of this stranger’s face was shaped by my state of mind as I helped my mother face her own aging. I do hope this man was not a reincarnated version of my father though! How rude it would be to be born at seventy-five.
posted by eirias at 11:23 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
posted by eirias at 11:23 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
We can't trust anyone's perception or recollection of perception. Brains do weird things. Sometimes they only do them ONE TIME. Which feels weird. Cause it's weird.
But I don't truly 100% believe anyone saying they saw an actual other human being with their exact face, who exists with objectively the same face as their face. I believe you SAW it.
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:26 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
But I don't truly 100% believe anyone saying they saw an actual other human being with their exact face, who exists with objectively the same face as their face. I believe you SAW it.
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:26 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]
Sorry, NPE means "non-paternity event" meaning your "biological" father as determined by genetic testing is not who you expected/presumed.
posted by muddgirl at 12:08 PM on May 3 [5 favorites]
posted by muddgirl at 12:08 PM on May 3 [5 favorites]
I have two sisters and people frequently mistake me for them, but not vice versa.
Even when I was in my gothy phase, black torn lycra and docs and buzzcut hair, people would think I'm my sisters, enough to have a whole conversation with me before I realise they don't know who I am.
Friends say we look similar enough to be recognisably sisters but don't understand how we could be mistaken for one another.
I think we have distinctive but similar vibes.
posted by Zumbador at 12:08 PM on May 3
Even when I was in my gothy phase, black torn lycra and docs and buzzcut hair, people would think I'm my sisters, enough to have a whole conversation with me before I realise they don't know who I am.
Friends say we look similar enough to be recognisably sisters but don't understand how we could be mistaken for one another.
I think we have distinctive but similar vibes.
posted by Zumbador at 12:08 PM on May 3
> As soon as we wish to make some kind of claim about how it is, we need to start defining words that refer to things that are not identical to the universe or we just get nowhere
you wouldn’t happen to be a fan of pseudo-dionysius because well i sure am — basically an approach i really like is kinda this one but without any claim that using words to refer to things that aren’t identical to the universe is possible. negative/apophatic theology is kind of a cop-out but as cop-outs go it’s a pretty good one.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:20 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
you wouldn’t happen to be a fan of pseudo-dionysius because well i sure am — basically an approach i really like is kinda this one but without any claim that using words to refer to things that aren’t identical to the universe is possible. negative/apophatic theology is kind of a cop-out but as cop-outs go it’s a pretty good one.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:20 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
Your haiku is good, and with a bit of structural revision it could be great.
😚👌
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 2:48 PM on May 3 [3 favorites]
😚👌
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 2:48 PM on May 3 [3 favorites]
"Your haiku is good, and with a bit of structural revision it could be great."
"😚👌"
Oh my God, this shit is irritating. Hippybear's cue should have been sufficient but clearly wasn't. Maybe this will work:
This Be The Verse
By Philip Larkin
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
posted by Don Pepino at 4:12 PM on May 3 [8 favorites]
"😚👌"
Oh my God, this shit is irritating. Hippybear's cue should have been sufficient but clearly wasn't. Maybe this will work:
This Be The Verse
By Philip Larkin
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
posted by Don Pepino at 4:12 PM on May 3 [8 favorites]
my supposed doppelganger looked nothing like me, except we were both white teenagers with long brown hair and glasses. We weren't even the same height or body type.
This was my experience, except for a change in hair color, with the "doppelganger" my ex saw when he was drunk. We clearly didn't think we were total twins when we met.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:26 PM on May 3
This was my experience, except for a change in hair color, with the "doppelganger" my ex saw when he was drunk. We clearly didn't think we were total twins when we met.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:26 PM on May 3
Hippybear's cue should have been sufficient but clearly wasn't.
I think some folks might be missing the joke, rather than the reference… Still, apologies for irritating you.
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 4:58 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
I think some folks might be missing the joke, rather than the reference… Still, apologies for irritating you.
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 4:58 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
I regularly get mistaken for Michael Eric Dyson, to the point I can often tell how I person is looking at me that they think I'm him and just shake my head and say"No, I'm not him". Then they smile or laugh self consciously, often saying something like "But you look just like him, are y'all related?!"
Occasionally people are convinced that I am him and simply denying it for...I dunno, various reasons?
I do chuckle at the idea that I could be minister though!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:36 PM on May 3
Occasionally people are convinced that I am him and simply denying it for...I dunno, various reasons?
I do chuckle at the idea that I could be minister though!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:36 PM on May 3
Re doppelgangers:
When i was nineteen i went to Paris, and one day i went to the Musée d'Orsay. Walking around, i came across Winterhalter's "Madame Barbe de Rimsky Korsakov", and i stopped absolutely dead and stared, with my mouth sort of working up and down, for a good ten or fifteen minutes. She was a tiny bit more square-jawed, but it was like looking in a fucking mirror.
posted by adrienneleigh at 5:50 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
When i was nineteen i went to Paris, and one day i went to the Musée d'Orsay. Walking around, i came across Winterhalter's "Madame Barbe de Rimsky Korsakov", and i stopped absolutely dead and stared, with my mouth sort of working up and down, for a good ten or fifteen minutes. She was a tiny bit more square-jawed, but it was like looking in a fucking mirror.
posted by adrienneleigh at 5:50 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
Here to tell you doppelgängers are common as dirt. The genome just isn’t that varied. In my 20s I worked for a huge outdoor education program in New England. We had about 100 kids every week all round the school year. I worked there 2.5 years, so in my time there I worked with about 10,000 kids. It became a routine joke among the staff to identify “this week’s Kevin” and the like. There were only so many variations of human children and sometimes the resemblances group to heinous were uncanny. None of us are that rare. As adults we make different choices of subculture and style that seem to add variety, but at the base of it, we’re just not all totally unique. Nature’s efficient, it repeats things that are successful.
I also saw one of my own doppelgängers in high school. A friend came back from the summer saying they met someone across the continent who “looks exactly like you.” I was skeptical because usually when someone says that they mean you generally have the same phenotype and body shape and eye shape and all, but that’s not the same as looking alike. But then they brought in their photo album and had a bunch of pictures of the person and it was the eeriest freaking thing : I saw myself, hairstyle, bike structure, eye color, clothing style and all.
We’re just not that special.
posted by Miko at 6:26 PM on May 3 [7 favorites]
I also saw one of my own doppelgängers in high school. A friend came back from the summer saying they met someone across the continent who “looks exactly like you.” I was skeptical because usually when someone says that they mean you generally have the same phenotype and body shape and eye shape and all, but that’s not the same as looking alike. But then they brought in their photo album and had a bunch of pictures of the person and it was the eeriest freaking thing : I saw myself, hairstyle, bike structure, eye color, clothing style and all.
We’re just not that special.
posted by Miko at 6:26 PM on May 3 [7 favorites]
The weirdest doppelganger thing I ever got was someone confusing me with Seth Green. I look nothing like Seth Green. Different hair color. Different head shape. Different pretty much everything. Also I'm a decade younger and was getting gas for my beat up Camry in Tulsa, OK. That seems like a very unlikely situation in which to see Seth Green. The only connection I could figure out is short white guy.
posted by downtohisturtles at 6:38 PM on May 3
posted by downtohisturtles at 6:38 PM on May 3
I've never been confused for a celebrity. I have had one person come up to me and completely insist I was someone that I am not. Down to the point of arguing with me about it in a very vigorous way. I've also had two people come up to me completely unbidden and tell me that I'm the reincarnation of an american soldier to Viet Nam who died shortly before I was born.
I didn't ask for any of these interactions. And they weren't "hey, you sort of look like" kinds of conversations. They were very specific and were very much telling me a thing about myself that was outside my experience.
I don't walk through the world with people saying "hey you look like Donald Sutherland" or whatever [that's my barber's usual comparison for me]. These were very very specific interactions that left me feeling very quite strange about the world.
I appreciate what everyone here is trying to say about this kind of thing, but unless you've had this kind of interaction, you can't imagine how really unsettling it is.
posted by hippybear at 7:00 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
I didn't ask for any of these interactions. And they weren't "hey, you sort of look like" kinds of conversations. They were very specific and were very much telling me a thing about myself that was outside my experience.
I don't walk through the world with people saying "hey you look like Donald Sutherland" or whatever [that's my barber's usual comparison for me]. These were very very specific interactions that left me feeling very quite strange about the world.
I appreciate what everyone here is trying to say about this kind of thing, but unless you've had this kind of interaction, you can't imagine how really unsettling it is.
posted by hippybear at 7:00 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
Well, daughter of a Vietnam veteran here, “reincarnated American soldier who died in Vietnam” is sort of a trope; and you can Google it. Grief does things, and so does the unknown (a lot of us never knew our dads).
posted by Miko at 7:04 PM on May 3 [6 favorites]
posted by Miko at 7:04 PM on May 3 [6 favorites]
Did I die in the Vietnam war
My past life as a Vietnam vet
Vietnam soldier past life
This kinda stuff is the same thing that fueled the whole spiritualism movement in the late 19c in the aftermath of the civil war. People flocked to seances and looked for signs that the million dead were still around and communicating, it’s the kind of social phenonmenon that accompanies the mass death of war. I wouldn’t read into it at a personal level; people who put stock in it this kind of thing aren’t that uncommon.
posted by Miko at 7:14 PM on May 3 [6 favorites]
My past life as a Vietnam vet
Vietnam soldier past life
This kinda stuff is the same thing that fueled the whole spiritualism movement in the late 19c in the aftermath of the civil war. People flocked to seances and looked for signs that the million dead were still around and communicating, it’s the kind of social phenonmenon that accompanies the mass death of war. I wouldn’t read into it at a personal level; people who put stock in it this kind of thing aren’t that uncommon.
posted by Miko at 7:14 PM on May 3 [6 favorites]
Dear god! I didn't ask for any of it! These are people who came up to me and said things to me! I'm not searching for any of this, it just is a thing that happened to me. Twice. Entirely separated. And they weren't grifters trying to scam me!
I don't know why it is so hard for people in this conversation to understand -- I was minding my own business and someone I've never seen before came up to me and claimed to be somehow "gifted" and told me I was the reincarnated soul of a Viet Nam soldier.
I was not looking for this information, I was not thinking about this information, there was nothing about me or anything happening in my life that should have welcomed a person like this to come up to me and speak to me about this.
I mean, you can lecture me all you want about how this is a trope or whatever, but I WAS NOT LOOKING FOR ANY OF THIS WHEN I ENCOUNTERED IT AND I HAVE NEVER SOUGHT OUT PAST LIFE THINGS OF ANY SORT IN ANY WAY AT ANY TIME IN MY LIFE.
I guess it's difficult for many reading this to understand how weird it is to have someone come up to you and start talking to you about things like this. It was entirely weird for me, too.
You can throw as many things at me as you want, but nothing is going to discount the strangeness of the experience I had of having complete strangers come up to me and talk to me about this entirely unbidden.
posted by hippybear at 7:24 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
I don't know why it is so hard for people in this conversation to understand -- I was minding my own business and someone I've never seen before came up to me and claimed to be somehow "gifted" and told me I was the reincarnated soul of a Viet Nam soldier.
I was not looking for this information, I was not thinking about this information, there was nothing about me or anything happening in my life that should have welcomed a person like this to come up to me and speak to me about this.
I mean, you can lecture me all you want about how this is a trope or whatever, but I WAS NOT LOOKING FOR ANY OF THIS WHEN I ENCOUNTERED IT AND I HAVE NEVER SOUGHT OUT PAST LIFE THINGS OF ANY SORT IN ANY WAY AT ANY TIME IN MY LIFE.
I guess it's difficult for many reading this to understand how weird it is to have someone come up to you and start talking to you about things like this. It was entirely weird for me, too.
You can throw as many things at me as you want, but nothing is going to discount the strangeness of the experience I had of having complete strangers come up to me and talk to me about this entirely unbidden.
posted by hippybear at 7:24 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
I've never been confused for a celebrity. I have had one person come up to me and completely insist I was someone that I am not. Down to the point of arguing with me about it in a very vigorous way.
The version I had of this was someone coming up to me and asking if I was Swiss. (Reader's note: I am not, I am natively-born west-coast US.) I said nope, but they simply didn't believe me. They argued with me for quite a while, and finally ended it with that huffy "well, if you insist on saying that" kind of stuff. It was bizarre. I was in a west cost city, I looked and dressed local, I spoke with a local accent, but no, apparently I was a closet Swiss person who couldn't admit the truth.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:30 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
The version I had of this was someone coming up to me and asking if I was Swiss. (Reader's note: I am not, I am natively-born west-coast US.) I said nope, but they simply didn't believe me. They argued with me for quite a while, and finally ended it with that huffy "well, if you insist on saying that" kind of stuff. It was bizarre. I was in a west cost city, I looked and dressed local, I spoke with a local accent, but no, apparently I was a closet Swiss person who couldn't admit the truth.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:30 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
Also, I'm basically done commenting here. So don't pile on me anymore. I'm sorry I said anything. I thought I was contributing to a discussion but it turns out I was fueling a fucking MetaFilter pile-on and I won't take much more of this. So fucking back off and leave me alone. No more questions, no more answers.
posted by hippybear at 7:31 PM on May 3
posted by hippybear at 7:31 PM on May 3
I'm sorry it feels that way to you, but from the outside there's no visible pile on happening. Different stories, different perspectives, but nothing weird or hostile. (Weird stories, but not weird to each other.)
posted by Dip Flash at 7:35 PM on May 3 [13 favorites]
posted by Dip Flash at 7:35 PM on May 3 [13 favorites]
Doppelgänger thing I watched recently and you may enjoy:
Do You Have An Unrelated Identical Twin? | Full Documentary | Finding The Most Identical Strangers [YT 47 min]
7 sets. None are identical but they’re all pretty uncanny. They do some testing to see which set is the “most” identical. I did not agree with their winner.
posted by Glinn at 7:37 PM on May 3 [2 favorites]
Do You Have An Unrelated Identical Twin? | Full Documentary | Finding The Most Identical Strangers [YT 47 min]
7 sets. None are identical but they’re all pretty uncanny. They do some testing to see which set is the “most” identical. I did not agree with their winner.
posted by Glinn at 7:37 PM on May 3 [2 favorites]
People tell me I look like Random Brown Celeb With A Round Face very often and that just tells me they don't interact a lot with other PoC. I also get a lot of people fighting my over my race/ethnicity/nationality. Welcome to the world of unconscious racism and xenophobia, I guess.
That being said, I did run into my doppleganger on YouTube of all places. Pretty bizarre to randomly stumble upon your face but with a nose piercing while you're looking for something to watch!
posted by creatrixtiara at 7:41 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
That being said, I did run into my doppleganger on YouTube of all places. Pretty bizarre to randomly stumble upon your face but with a nose piercing while you're looking for something to watch!
posted by creatrixtiara at 7:41 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]
These are people who came up to me and said things to me
Yeah, I’m saying that there’s just a lot of people out there who really want to believe in reincarnated Vietnam soldiers. I mean nearly 60,00 Americans died - that a huge psychological scar and it happened in a very close space of time. People look around and project this immense and disturbing loss on other people that they see. That’s all it means. It has very little to do with who you are.
Apart from everything else, why would we even physically resemble someone we were reincarnating? It’s just an association some people make, based on appearances. People just make up stories.
posted by Miko at 7:44 PM on May 3 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I’m saying that there’s just a lot of people out there who really want to believe in reincarnated Vietnam soldiers. I mean nearly 60,00 Americans died - that a huge psychological scar and it happened in a very close space of time. People look around and project this immense and disturbing loss on other people that they see. That’s all it means. It has very little to do with who you are.
Apart from everything else, why would we even physically resemble someone we were reincarnating? It’s just an association some people make, based on appearances. People just make up stories.
posted by Miko at 7:44 PM on May 3 [2 favorites]
hippybear, it seemed to me people were idly speculating why that thing may have happened to you. I may have missed something but I don’t think anyone intended to upset you. That being said, it sucks to feel that way.
posted by Glinn at 7:45 PM on May 3 [9 favorites]
posted by Glinn at 7:45 PM on May 3 [9 favorites]
Oh my God, this shit is irritating.
Fairmettle missed
the cue
that was in
the snippet
and which
you would probably
rather
they had caught
Forgive them
it was delicious
so dry
and so trolled
posted by flabdablet at 8:23 PM on May 3 [5 favorites]
Fairmettle missed
the cue
that was in
the snippet
and which
you would probably
rather
they had caught
Forgive them
it was delicious
so dry
and so trolled
posted by flabdablet at 8:23 PM on May 3 [5 favorites]
Here to tell you doppelgängers are common as dirt. The genome just isn’t that varied.
It kind of is, but it's managed to crap out eight billion of us at this point and I'd be weirded out if the human hash table didn't contain loads of collisions. See also: birthday paradox.
posted by flabdablet at 8:32 PM on May 3 [3 favorites]
It kind of is, but it's managed to crap out eight billion of us at this point and I'd be weirded out if the human hash table didn't contain loads of collisions. See also: birthday paradox.
posted by flabdablet at 8:32 PM on May 3 [3 favorites]
basically an approach i really like is kinda this one but without any claim that using words to refer to things that aren’t identical to the universe is possible.
The thing about that claim is that very few writers make it explicit, seeming content to leave it implicit in the fact of their having written anything at all.
The counter-claim - that words cannot refer to parts or aspects of the universe rather than to the universe as a whole - is easily refuted: replace every word in any argument supporting such a claim with the word "universe" and then challenge the claimant to extract meaning from the result.
The danger in leaving the original claim implicit and unacknowledged is that it becomes very easy to mistake statements about how things are for statements about what the universe "really" is rather than about how we're using such words as we choose to.
Almost all of the serious attempts at ontology that I've ever seen seem to me to be instances of this kind of mistake. My own personal ontology, in its entirety, is "this is". Anything more detailed or nuanced than that, I've got filed under assorted kinds of epistemology.
posted by flabdablet at 9:49 PM on May 3
The thing about that claim is that very few writers make it explicit, seeming content to leave it implicit in the fact of their having written anything at all.
The counter-claim - that words cannot refer to parts or aspects of the universe rather than to the universe as a whole - is easily refuted: replace every word in any argument supporting such a claim with the word "universe" and then challenge the claimant to extract meaning from the result.
The danger in leaving the original claim implicit and unacknowledged is that it becomes very easy to mistake statements about how things are for statements about what the universe "really" is rather than about how we're using such words as we choose to.
Almost all of the serious attempts at ontology that I've ever seen seem to me to be instances of this kind of mistake. My own personal ontology, in its entirety, is "this is". Anything more detailed or nuanced than that, I've got filed under assorted kinds of epistemology.
posted by flabdablet at 9:49 PM on May 3
Much like the fact that you have a 1 in 135 chance of having an exact facial doppelganger,
This does not pass the sniff test, mathematically. I live in a city of over 135000 people, there are not 1000 copies of me in my geographical area. So I googled it. The research is that there is a 1 in 135 chance of one pair of exact doppelgangers among the 8 trillion of us on this rock, but the odds of your or my doppelganger existing is 1 in 1 trillion. So there are about 8 of any one of us on the planet, which explains why I'm not tripping over my clones hither and yon.
posted by axiom at 10:22 PM on May 3 [2 favorites]
This does not pass the sniff test, mathematically. I live in a city of over 135000 people, there are not 1000 copies of me in my geographical area. So I googled it. The research is that there is a 1 in 135 chance of one pair of exact doppelgangers among the 8 trillion of us on this rock, but the odds of your or my doppelganger existing is 1 in 1 trillion. So there are about 8 of any one of us on the planet, which explains why I'm not tripping over my clones hither and yon.
posted by axiom at 10:22 PM on May 3 [2 favorites]
If there really were eight trillion of us, we wouldn't stay breathing long enough to be worried about doppelgangers.
Check your prefixes.
posted by flabdablet at 11:03 PM on May 3 [2 favorites]
Check your prefixes.
posted by flabdablet at 11:03 PM on May 3 [2 favorites]
To be fair, counting people becomes really really difficult when there are dopplegangers.
posted by Ashenmote at 12:52 AM on May 4 [7 favorites]
posted by Ashenmote at 12:52 AM on May 4 [7 favorites]
About 10 years ago I'm sitting in a restaurant in LAX on a layover, minding my own business. Suddenly at a table across the restaurant I see about 8 people turn and look at me all at once. And they KEEP looking at me. I actually looked over my shoulder to see who they were looking at (apparently not the bad airport restaurant wall "art") then looked down to double check my blouse hadn't popped open or I spilled on myself or something (No, whew!).
Finally, two of them came over to apologize for staring at me. Turns out they were all from the same company in NYC and were heading back from LA on a business trip. They tell me I looked *exactly* like the owner of the company. So much so that they had all thought for a half a second she was checking up on them or trying to surprise them or something.
One of them shows me a pic on her phone and I'll be damned if I'm not staring back at pretty much exact duplicate of ME: Same head shape, eyes, lips, nose, skin type and even the same freaking hair. Wild.
I still have the photo some place. They were actually all very nice so I ended up going to their table for a drink and happily let them take a few photos of me to show her.
I wonder about her sometimes and hope MeButNotMe is having a great life!
posted by crayon at 1:52 AM on May 4 [6 favorites]
Finally, two of them came over to apologize for staring at me. Turns out they were all from the same company in NYC and were heading back from LA on a business trip. They tell me I looked *exactly* like the owner of the company. So much so that they had all thought for a half a second she was checking up on them or trying to surprise them or something.
One of them shows me a pic on her phone and I'll be damned if I'm not staring back at pretty much exact duplicate of ME: Same head shape, eyes, lips, nose, skin type and even the same freaking hair. Wild.
I still have the photo some place. They were actually all very nice so I ended up going to their table for a drink and happily let them take a few photos of me to show her.
I wonder about her sometimes and hope MeButNotMe is having a great life!
posted by crayon at 1:52 AM on May 4 [6 favorites]
counting people becomes really really difficult when there are dopplegangers
Can confirm. When in the middle of the psychotic episode I've written about elsewhere on this site, I became firmly convinced that in fact the world contains only twelve people, one of whom every person I encountered was an instance even though they didn't know it.
The world becomes a very weird place when one falls into a state of instantly recognizing everything as identical to everything else.
posted by flabdablet at 2:38 AM on May 4 [7 favorites]
Can confirm. When in the middle of the psychotic episode I've written about elsewhere on this site, I became firmly convinced that in fact the world contains only twelve people, one of whom every person I encountered was an instance even though they didn't know it.
The world becomes a very weird place when one falls into a state of instantly recognizing everything as identical to everything else.
posted by flabdablet at 2:38 AM on May 4 [7 favorites]
I remember about twenty years ago I got the sinking feeling that I've run out of new faces to meet and from now on every other face would just remind me of someone else I already had opinions and feelings about, forever. That wasn't like your episode, just having the Blues. And also I was wrong about it, of course. But I can relate a tiny tiny little bit.
posted by Ashenmote at 4:54 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]
posted by Ashenmote at 4:54 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]
I live in a city of over 135000 people, there are not 1000 copies of me in my geographical area.
Without speaking to the veracity of it at all (and especially not to the precision of the statistic), I think you're mangling the math here. The claim isn't that there's a 1 in 135 chance that each person might be your doppelganger. The claim is that there's a 1 in 135 chance that you have a doppelganger at all, amongst everyone currently living.
posted by nobody at 7:35 AM on May 4 [3 favorites]
Without speaking to the veracity of it at all (and especially not to the precision of the statistic), I think you're mangling the math here. The claim isn't that there's a 1 in 135 chance that each person might be your doppelganger. The claim is that there's a 1 in 135 chance that you have a doppelganger at all, amongst everyone currently living.
posted by nobody at 7:35 AM on May 4 [3 favorites]
Mod note: A few comments removed. If another community member says they're feeling piled, please just cease engaging with them, thank you.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:54 AM on May 4 [4 favorites]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:54 AM on May 4 [4 favorites]
maybe don't be a dick to people who are keeping an open mind about what might be going on
I prefer being a dick to people who claim to be keeping an open mind about what might be going on when what they're obviously doing instead is clinging as tightly as possible to whatever untestable Just So story fits their existing prejudices. Especially when by doing so they're actively fucking up their kids.
posted by flabdablet at 8:20 AM on May 4 [5 favorites]
I prefer being a dick to people who claim to be keeping an open mind about what might be going on when what they're obviously doing instead is clinging as tightly as possible to whatever untestable Just So story fits their existing prejudices. Especially when by doing so they're actively fucking up their kids.
posted by flabdablet at 8:20 AM on May 4 [5 favorites]
Sorry didn't see you were feeling piled on when I commented. The mods deleted my apology, so cutting out the part where I explained myself and leaving this - If you read this, hope you have a better MeFi day today.
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:17 AM on May 4 [4 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:17 AM on May 4 [4 favorites]
> My own personal ontology, in its entirety, is "this is". Anything more detailed or nuanced than that, I've got filed under assorted kinds of epistemology.
i'd broadly speaking agree with this, except
when i get down to it the only reason i like parmenidean monism is that the metaphysical stance that actually feels most immediately true-ish to me is ontological nihilism, but ontological nihilism has the disadvantage of being immediately and obviously self-contradictory. and if i can't have zero, i'll just have to make do with one.
the big problem with ontological nihilism is that no evidence for it exists, but also that's a point in its favor right?
oh snap can we get rid of the referent for "is" altogether, like, neither "this is" or "it is" but instead just "is"?
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:33 AM on May 4 [2 favorites]
i'd broadly speaking agree with this, except
- fiddly quibble: i'd replace "this is" with "it is", since (this may be idiosyncratic) "this" feels more certain than "it" — like, "this" gives me a subtle sense that the thing that is can be in some way pointed to, or maybe even counted.
- more significant quibble: as i see it all the more detailed and nuanced stuff filed under epistemology bears absolutely no connection whatsoever, not even a tenuous one, to the it that is.
when i get down to it the only reason i like parmenidean monism is that the metaphysical stance that actually feels most immediately true-ish to me is ontological nihilism, but ontological nihilism has the disadvantage of being immediately and obviously self-contradictory. and if i can't have zero, i'll just have to make do with one.
the big problem with ontological nihilism is that no evidence for it exists, but also that's a point in its favor right?
oh snap can we get rid of the referent for "is" altogether, like, neither "this is" or "it is" but instead just "is"?
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:33 AM on May 4 [2 favorites]
"this" feels more certain than "it" — like, "this" gives me a subtle sense that the thing that is can be in some way pointed to, or maybe even counted.
I consider the availability of both of those possibilities, when in states of consciousness capable of exercising them, to be a feature rather than a bug. Just because I can point to or count things doesn't mean I must.
There are states of consciousness (e.g. the k-hole) where pointing and counting both go offline, as does the ability to make even the fundamental distinction between self and not-self that would open the possibility of "this" and "it" having different referents ("be" and "is" likewise). When in such a state, the only available response to "this is" is to continuing being until normal service is resumed or consciousness is lost.
It's been my experience that whenever words are capable of occurring to me at all, the claim that "this is" makes is true by direct inspection, and I like that about it.
If some attempt to describe the referent of "this" can be made, I have no in-principle objection to doing so. When in states of consciousness capable of supporting skepticism, though, I have found it valuable to apply it to all such descriptions.
My personal epistemology has all claims about this, including claims of the form "There is no such thing as ..." amount to descriptions of this, which means that the claim "There is no such thing as genuine certainty" is covered under the skepticism policy.
posted by flabdablet at 5:47 PM on May 4 [2 favorites]
I consider the availability of both of those possibilities, when in states of consciousness capable of exercising them, to be a feature rather than a bug. Just because I can point to or count things doesn't mean I must.
There are states of consciousness (e.g. the k-hole) where pointing and counting both go offline, as does the ability to make even the fundamental distinction between self and not-self that would open the possibility of "this" and "it" having different referents ("be" and "is" likewise). When in such a state, the only available response to "this is" is to continuing being until normal service is resumed or consciousness is lost.
It's been my experience that whenever words are capable of occurring to me at all, the claim that "this is" makes is true by direct inspection, and I like that about it.
If some attempt to describe the referent of "this" can be made, I have no in-principle objection to doing so. When in states of consciousness capable of supporting skepticism, though, I have found it valuable to apply it to all such descriptions.
My personal epistemology has all claims about this, including claims of the form "There is no such thing as ..." amount to descriptions of this, which means that the claim "There is no such thing as genuine certainty" is covered under the skepticism policy.
posted by flabdablet at 5:47 PM on May 4 [2 favorites]
As I get older and more fearful of the world, I hope the delusions I reach for are a belief in reincarnation instead of Fox News conspiracy theories. But once I allow myself to believe anything with the easy excuse of "open-mindedness", I can't be certain where I'll find comfort.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:21 PM on May 4 [1 favorite]
posted by AlSweigart at 7:21 PM on May 4 [1 favorite]
as i see it all the more detailed and nuanced stuff filed under epistemology bears absolutely no connection whatsoever, not even a tenuous one, to the it that is.
Any description of the this-that-is necessarily rests on making distinctions in order to break it conceptually into things. If it's me doing the describing, it's also me making the distinctions. The class of distinction I enjoy the most and will generally reach for first is part vs whole; I use those a lot.
The detailed and nuanced stuff I've got filed under epistemology - that is, the descriptions of the this-that-is that I keep around because I've found them useful - are parts of my internal world-model. That internal world-model is part of me. I am part of the this-that-is (or the it-that-is, if you prefer that label; it seems to me that the referent is identical). So that's how that connection works.
In order to agree that there is no connection whatsoever between my internal epistemology and the it-that-is, I would need to assume some kind of relationship other than part vs whole between my world-model and me and/or between me and the it-that-is. I see no value in doing that, so I don't.
posted by flabdablet at 8:53 PM on May 4
Any description of the this-that-is necessarily rests on making distinctions in order to break it conceptually into things. If it's me doing the describing, it's also me making the distinctions. The class of distinction I enjoy the most and will generally reach for first is part vs whole; I use those a lot.
The detailed and nuanced stuff I've got filed under epistemology - that is, the descriptions of the this-that-is that I keep around because I've found them useful - are parts of my internal world-model. That internal world-model is part of me. I am part of the this-that-is (or the it-that-is, if you prefer that label; it seems to me that the referent is identical). So that's how that connection works.
In order to agree that there is no connection whatsoever between my internal epistemology and the it-that-is, I would need to assume some kind of relationship other than part vs whole between my world-model and me and/or between me and the it-that-is. I see no value in doing that, so I don't.
posted by flabdablet at 8:53 PM on May 4
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That being said, I had an out of body near death experience when I was a teenager, that I still cannot fit into any kind of framework than I can explain in rational terms.
posted by Windopaene at 8:13 PM on May 2 [7 favorites]