[deciplex]

Human memory is extremely unreliable.

> This is obviously an inadequate explanation for the parent's complex ongoing saga so it doesn't add much

Sorry but I am not going to copy/paste hundreds of paragraphs of literature from neural science journals in order to give a comprehensive analysis of what OP experienced. Especially since, based on their other comments in this thread, they aren't terribly interested in that sort of explanation anyway.

At any rate, the compelling explanation you think we won't have for centuries in the future, we literally already have. You just don't like it because it's not mystical enough for you. You accuse me of dismissing people's experience while dismissing the experiences of hundreds of researchers who have documented and studied this sort of thing for years.

[kranke155]

I have no idea why you'd think I'm not interested in scientific explanations. Seems like an assumption to me.

[lend000]

This is what I'm talking about: shallow dismissals without even a footnote to avoid admitting that you don't understand the parent's experience. Your reaction to the parent, immediately trying to shut it down with weak explanations, suggests a complete lack of curiosity in the mechanics of how things work, which I don't think is true.

> At any rate, the compelling explanation you think we won't have for centuries in the future, we literally already have.

No, we don't. I'll even refer you to an expository article that describes some studies about what you are probably alluding to, and you can let me know how you think it adequately accounts for the parent's story [0].

Spoiler: it requires someone taking the effort to implant the memories (a pretty significant caveat worth mentioning, I would think), and I've certainly never seen it applied to some ongoing thing like a disembodied voice with apparent agency.

But even where memory implantation is relatively accepted ala coercive police interrogations, the mechanism in the brain is unknown. Was a new memory implanted or was a subject simply gaslit into remembering the conversation with the interrogator? Where in the brain is that belief encoded? How can it be simulated? Did the parent never experience a voice then? They just have a continuously updating memory being implanted by some researcher? You clearly haven't thought this through, so don't be so quick to shut it down.

The reality is that none of us here have a good explanation for the parent's experience -- brains are barely understood at all. Your skepticism to the parent's interpretation is fine, but your attempt to discredit with a blanket cop out statement that lacks any mechanism or reproducibility on the scale of the parent's story only serves to let you keep pretending like you know everything.

[0] https://www.bxscience.edu/ourpages/auto/2013/10/5/59413507/F...

[deciplex]

I will refer you to my earlier post:

  To me "I don't know" is pretty close to "didn't happen" anyway. I mean we will even say "hmm, I don't know about that" to indicate skepticism.

  I suppose you are picturing someone who is obstinately refusing to believe or even investigate a claim, but when I hear "null hypothesis" it's really just "you haven't given me any reason to believe this." And that's not quite the same as "I don't know" but it's not that far off either, is it? Maybe it's just me.

I don't know where you're getting this idea that I'm shutting down their experience in the way you describe. But like, do you think this story of theirs is that unique? Have you really never heard anything like this before? Because it kind of seems like it. So it's not that I'm dismissing their story out of hand, but rather stories like this are not that uncommon and generally in my experience you don't need to resort to the supernatural to explain them. So that's where I'm coming from and, again, I'm not even telling them they're wrong as you suggest, but I am reverting to the "null hypotheses" as you say. But, as I already explained, to me that's more of a "you haven't given me any reason to believe this" than it is a "you're wrong, didn't happen." Unfortunately you seem committed to taking equal offense to both, as though they are equal, and we are at an impasse.

At any rate, you're being oddly hostile toward me about all of this and it's getting on my nerves so I'll be ignoring your posts in this thread going forward. Thanks.

[lend000]

I do want to apologize for being unnecessarily confrontational, although I stand by my general points. It was your reply to the parent about misremembering their experience that threw me on a tangent. I will just say I think there's a better way to approach these conversations, even if you think it's nonsense.