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by IIAOPSW 1157 days ago
I have an uncle that has this funny habit of answering the door before you ring the bell. That sounds impressive until you learn how many times a day he opens the door and no one is there. He's schizophrenic. The cost of increased sensitivity is a higher false positive rate. If there were no drawbacks, evolution would have given us heightened senses 100% of the time.

I'm not suggesting you had any sort of psychiatric issue. I'm sure your increased sensitivity was very real and very grounded in realistic expectations of reality. But, are you sure that there were no false positives that came with the heightened sensory experience? Did you ever check that the thing you recognized as a garage door opening down the block was in fact a garage door opening down the block? Could it have been some other subtle sound you normally don't pick up on?
1 comments
JayStavis 1157 days ago
On the garage door bit, yes I actually did confirm this.

With that said, was certainly hearing all sorts of things that I didn't know what they were, typically very low frequencies. Another comment mentioned my own heartbeat which I could hear, and I couldn't go into work for a few days due to how painful and distracting ambient noise was.

For the duration of the period I was wearing noise-canceling airpods, and it was the only way trucks passing by outside wouldn't make me wince.

No history of psychiatric issues fwiw, but have had my share of ENT irregularities (I can't properly equalize while diving, for example).

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IIAOPSW 1157 days ago
Really really want to clarify I was in no way implying a psychiatric issue. Just that anything which turns up the sensitivity of our perception also turns up our false positive rate. Everyone experiences false positives sometimes: occasional, temporary, erroneous perceptions. Its only psychiatric when the signal to noise ratio is too low to correct.

Very interested in the ultra low frequency bit. Any estimate at how many hertz it was? Somewhere under 20 hz it has to stop being sound and start being a consciously perceptible "puff of air".

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