I stopped deja-vu

[alkalein]

brrrr.... This is not going to be approved by a lot of you guys (god, that sounds so bad, 'you guys', sorry, I don't mean it like that. I'd preffer to say friends, but i only just joined this community tonight, so sorry...). So, how to explain this...? I used to often experience deja-vu, but now, when it comes, it just stops, because it's now not what I thought it was. Since it's actually the past and not the present I'm experiencing in life. Cognitive delay? The simplest example is when your standing on a hill, waiting to take your shot with your golf club and the fella 200 yards away whacks the ball (you just saw that visually), then 2 to 3 seconds later, you hear the 'whack'. So yeh, there's 'obvious' reasons for the delay (light speed, versus speed of sound/ wind, etc...). So, the same with deja-vu. In a way, taking into account, that my reasons are valid enough from experience and this kind of logic that I'm getting at. it was both exciting and at the same time saddening when i cam to realise this. i used to love that weird experience and not know what the hell it meant. So, maybe i've not gotten to the point of explaining my theory and in a way, I'm wondering whether I should continue, becuase maybe, on the off-chance that it's accurate, it's like spoiling the fun. But to hell with it, I'm gonna be a dick and go ahead with my theory, and i'd love to hear some feedback (most people, including my friends don't buy this idea and seem kind of irrate when i go on about it, so maybe this isn't the best topic to begin to get to know people at this forum,.....but..... My pondering and thinking and wondering and dissecting got me to the point that i now don't really experience that 'phenomen'. When 'it' happens, my reasoning for it kicks in, and the sensation just disappears. What's very important here, is that i am not bragging about 'cracking' the mystery of deja-vu. My theory is that consciensously we don't actually experience the 'present'. it's a matter of a massively short amount of time that we arrange experiences (smells/ visions/....), or whatever it is that we're 'experiencing' at an instance intov some kind of order. Fact is, we're never experiencing a moment as it occurs. There's (and this is the key i think), 'almost' always a delay that occurs for our cognitive faculties to arrange an experience into logical terms (to translate an outward experience into something that we perceive as real, whether we understand it or not). So, that 'time' that occurs where an action occurs without, and our brain perceives it, is so fine, yet real, and sometimes that neurological process of intaking information and translating it occcurs so quickly that it seems that we've actually been there vas the moments/ experiences unfold. This is the funny thing, beacuse, you've always 'been there' as something happens. It seems like your returning to a similar event or place in time, when in fact (?), your just remembering what just happened billiseconds (or something such), ago. So, it gets real weird when these 'memories' occur so quickly, or as i mentioned' tightly', and you think you've been in the same space and time, when as a mater of fact you have been (billiseconds ago). you know, that feeling like; Woh, i was here before and then you said that, and oh my god, you just did, and so on, because you 'had' been there. moments before you rationalised the whole ordeal in your brain. Deja- vu is when your 'almost' experiencing real time. You'll never acgtuall experience real time, since the brain always requires an amount of time to sort out and understand/ organize, etc. whats going on, but when you're having deja-vu experience, that's when your brian is on fire. My opinion, backed only by my experience and my words, so work it out for yourself and fill me in on this issue if more is known and if I'm dilluding myself here. Besides, it's been about 20 hours since I've slept, i'm listening to fairly minmal techno, and i've a head full of rum, so all apologies.... Alex.

[Merlock]

There's (and this is the key i think), 'almost' always a delay that occurs for our cognitive faculties to arrange an experience into logical terms (to translate an outward experience into something that we perceive as real, whether we understand it or not). Logical terms being conceptual thought, aye. The same form of thought as dreams are built of, into which information from the senses is turned to. Deja- vu is when your 'almost' experiencing real time. You'll never acgtuall experience real time, since the brain always requires an amount of time to sort out and understand/ organize, etc. whats going on, but when you're having deja-vu experience, that's when your brian is on fire. So you're saying that deja vu is simply an increase in that "gap"? Or a decrease?

[Lseadragon]

It would be an increase, as it's far enough apart to be thought of as two separate events.

[Merlock]

At first it seems to make sense but how then does one experiencing deja vu know what is about to happen too, not just thinking that what is happening at the very second already did? There were many threads on this very forum from people that had extremely long periods of deja vu, which only illustrated how deja vu happens - you start feeling that this has already happen but not because of what you've experienced up to this second, rather because you know what is about to happen too.

[Tornado Joe]

At first it seems to make sense but how then does one experiencing deja vu know what is about to happen too, not just thinking that what is happening at the very second already did? I was thinking the same thing, but then I got it. I think what he's saying is that what you experience as "about to happen", in fact already DID happen. You have the following equation for experience: 1) the event that happens + 2)your senses collecting info + 3) interpretation of the info = the experience. So, I think he's saying that steps 2 and 3 get mixed up (in our heads) sometimes, resulting in you interpreting something before you feel your senses have collected them. This would give you the illusion of having "known" something without yet experiencing it. Pretty interesting theory, Alkalein - I think I could buy into that, however this explains deja-vu as a "human error" rather than metaphysics, claravoyance, etc. A bit too simple an explanation, but hey, why does everything have to be complicated, anyway? (PS- if I missinterpreted your theory, Alkalein, I'd like to enter the above as a new theory to throw in the mix )

[MindDaguerreotype]

I've read that some scientific experiments had somehow proved that our self-consciousness is actually delayed by some non-trivial amount of time (1, maybe 2 seconds ?), as if we "lived" always after the reality happened. I think the experiment was : the subject had to decide at an arbitrary moment, to move his finger, while getting a brain scan. The scan then showed that the brain part involved in movement was activated before the brain part associated with conscious decision. (I can't find it now, maybe I'm wrong).

[Moonbeam]

I've read that some scientific experiments had somehow proved that our self-consciousness is actually delayed by some non-trivial amount of time (1, maybe 2 seconds ?), as if we "lived" always after the reality happened. I think the experiment was : the subject had to decide at an arbitrary moment, to move his finger, while getting a brain scan. The scan then showed that the brain part involved in movement was activated before the brain part associated with conscious decision. (I can't find it now, maybe I'm wrong). Yes this is described in the book "The Meme Machine" by Susan Blackmore. Part of the explanation for this that she gives is that our consciousness is just a story that are brains are making up to explain things as our physical bodies go about their business. This helps show how we could function without free-will, and that it may be an illusion. It's a very good book, in my opinion.

[Tornado Joe]

is that our consciousness is just a story that are brains are making up to explain things as our physical bodies go about their business. An already written or developing story?

[Moonbeam]

An already written or developing story? A story your consciousness makes up to explain to yourself what you are doing, developing as you go along (actually, I think that it may be more accurately described to say that the story is what your consciousness is, and gives you the illusion that you are in control, while really you are just observing events as they unfold). Re the experiment above; people will say that they decided to move their finger, then they moved it; while the scans clearly show that they moved it, and then became aware of moving it.

[Merlock]

1) the event that happens + 2) your senses collecting info + 3) interpretation of the info = the experience. So, I think he's saying that steps 2 and 3 get mixed up Not plausible. And it can't "seem" like it either. Interpreting info takes collected info. It doesn't make sense for interpreation to happen before the info is there, nor would it really be feasible to confuse those two steps. So the only gap that might take place is the time gap between gathering the info by senses and interpreting it but always in that order. The mystery of deja-vu continues!

[Tornado Joe]

Not plausible. And it can't "seem" like it either. Interpreting info takes collected info. It doesn't make sense for interpreation to happen before the info is there, Sure it can - subliminal messages. Information collected by your senses without your awareness, which inhibits (or delays) you from making an (imediate) intepretation. I'm not suggesting 2 and 3 literally swap places, but the order in which we process may create this illusion.

[Xaqaria]

This doesn't follow logically. No matter how quickly or slowly your brain interprets sensory data, it will still be the first time you are experiencing that exact set of sensory input. If you were able to speed up sensory transmission somehow, You wouldn't then experience the data again at the normal time, you would still just experience everything once. There would be no overlap of data no matter if you could close the sensory/real time gap or if you stretched it out for minutes.

[Xaqaria]

As far as I'm concerned, deja-vu isn't very mysterious. Your brain stores away every bit of sensory data you ever take in whether its important or unimportant. Most of that information is locked away deep in your subconscious never to be thought of again. When you find yourself in similar circumstances, however your brain will find a pattern and tie them together no matter how inconsequential they seem seperately. Thats how our minds work; we are essentially a large database combined with a pattern recognition program. So, when something you see or do or hear is similar enough to an event that happened previously but wasn't worth consciously remembering, your brain draws a correlation between the two and you feel as if you've done that thing before even though you can't consciously remember what it is that makes you feel that way.

[Merlock]

I'll have to agree with your first post but disagree with the second, heh. The feeling of deja-vu is just too precise and overwhelming to be caused by such a mechanism of pattern recognition.