[labrador]

I spent months underwater on a US submarine and felt the same thing. Later the Navy pdoc labelled it dissociation, which is in the DSM.

    Common Types and Symptoms

    Depersonalization: Feeling detached from your own body, mind, or actions, like watching yourself in a movie.

    Derealization: Feeling that the outside world is fake, dreamlike, or foggy.

    Dissociative Amnesia: Forgetting important personal information or blocks of time that go beyond normal memory loss.

    Identity Confusion or Alteration: Feeling unsure of who you are or experiencing shifts in your personality.

    Causes and Triggers

    Trauma and Stress: Acts as a defense mechanism against overwhelming stress, abuse, or frightening events.

    Everyday Triggers: Loud noises, strong emotions, or reminders of past trauma.

    Mild States: Getting lost in a book, daydreaming, or "highway hypnosis" while driving.

[an0malous]

The observer effect, depersonalization and derealization sound a lot like how many mystical traditions describe awakening of Self-realization

[lanstin]

There is no observer in realization. Dissociation is having your self be separated from reality. Safe from the trauma, but not whole. Mystic union is more like having seeing the boundaries between self and other as illusory, and fully experiencing.

[taurath]

The deeper you get into dissociation, the more a LOT of mysterious or mystical human experiences start to make sense. The public generally doesn’t understand the mechanism or that our brains can do it, or how far it can go into structural dissociation.

[moralestapia]

The awakening of self-realization sounds a lot like how many modern scholars describe the observer effect, depersonalization and derealization.

[devmor]

I think you all might be using the wrong terminology here. The Observer Effect is a part of quantum physics. I was shocked to learn there was a psychological phenomenon by the same name and went to read up on it, but there doesn't seem to be such a thing and I'm not really sure what you're referencing.

Is there another name you might know this by? Disassociation is the only thing I can find that sounds similar.

[r1chard007]

Overview effect

[devmor]

Thank you! I have heard of this before and did not know what it was called.

[jibal]

No one but you capitalized it. They are referring to what TFA describes ... it uses the phrase "observer sensation" rather than "observer effect", but it is an effect.

[devmor]

I’m not sure what capitalization has to do with anything. You can answer my question without being a pedant.

[ButlerianJihad]

No man can answer your question.

https://m.xkcd.com/1704/

This is a neologism to describe something that is "not in the DSM" and not concretely documented in a particular study. This alleged phenomenon and coinage is the emergent result of some analysis by this journalist, writing for a commercial news site that sells ads but does not launch any astronauts or spacecraft anywhere, much less interview or evaluate them once they've landed and arrived home.

Commenters who are comparing it to a selection in the DSM-IV, or "oh yeah, I felt like this once" anecdotes are projecting subjective experience onto subjective journalism about subjective testimony. Where is our scientific empiricism? Would you like some ketamine? Would you care to take less ketamine?

Therefore, "observer sensation" means just what the journalist chooses it to mean. Nothing more, and nothing less.

[jibal]

Pedant? I was simply trying to be helpful. My point was that "the Observer Effect", a specific thing in physics, is clearly not the same as the "observer sensation" that TFA refers to and that someone here casually referred to as an "observer effect". If anyone is being pedantic it's the person who wrote "I think you all might be using the wrong terminology here".

And elsewhere you accuse someone of "toe[ing] the line of fascist propaganda" based on your own misrepresentation of what they wrote and meant -- wow. And then there's https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022168 ... lots of hostility and trolling.

Fortunately my HN front end has a mute function. Applied.

[kelseyfrog]

Even the method of getting there is earily similar to some vipassana techniques, in particular Mahasi Sayadaw style noting.

From the article:

> Astronauts spend half a year in a mode of continuous self-monitoring — checking themselves, narrating their steps.

Mahasi style noting:

> When you look at the tap or water-pot on arriving at the place where you are to take a drink, be sure to make a mental note, looking, seeing.

> When you stop walking, stopping.

> When you stretch out the hand, stretching.

> When you touch the cup, touching.

> When you take the cup, taking.

> When dipping the cup into the water, dipping.

> When bringing the cup to the lips, bringing.

> When the cup touches the lips, touching.

> When you swallow, swallowing.

> When returning the cup, returning.

> When withdrawing the hand, withdrawing.

> When you bring down the hand, bringing.

> When the hand touches the side of the body, touching. If you intend to turn round, intending.

> When you turn round, turning.

> When you walk forward, walking.

> On arriving at the place where you intend to stop, intending.

> When you stop, stopping.[1]

Six months of noting during ones entire waking experience has certain similarities to being on retreat and doing nothing but the practice. It's remarkable that without any intentional cross pollination, astronauts seemingly arrived at the same place meditators do just by performing the same practices. I wonder if they experienced fruition events during their time in space.

1. Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw Practical Vipassana Exercises https://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/mahasit1.pdf

[beedeebeedee]

I’d be curious to learn about what you were experiencing, what the astronauts experience and the third man syndrome that Everest hikers experience. I don’t know if they are similar but I’d be curious to learn more about how our perception and attachment to our bodies changes while enduring these extreme conditions.

As a side note, it seems pretty naive to believe that humans would be able to handle going to Mars without serious psychosis. I have no idea, but it would not be surprising to find out it is an insurmountable obstacle to becoming an interplanetary species.

[cosmic_cheese]

I would be extremely surprised if it's insurmountable. It may turn out that this effect is triggered by environmental factors that are entirely controllable that we simply never had any reason to control.

There are so many unknowns when it comes to crewed space travel and habitation that it's difficult to say much of anything with certainty.

[nine_k]

Crewed sea travel should offer many hints. Its history is many centuries long.

[Aboutplants]

I’ve always thought the same thing with regards to early explorers. Being on a ship, sailing into the complete unknown, for months. How would you not go insane?

[lanstin]

Wow, I would sign up instantly for such a voyage to Mars. I am probably too old but knowing why you are engaged in a heroic task makes one happy to tolerate all kinds of problems. Sure they might get a bit twitchy but gonna stay basically glued.

[kakacik]

People assume they handle hardships one way, and then when SHTF and their mind starts coming off seams under severe stress and fear they often realize reality is someplace else.

For many of us exposed to mortal dangers in one way or another via more or less extreme sports with little margins for errors, we realized our limits are often much further than we thought. Training and exposure hardens mind too. But it also goes the other way - without that training and experience, its all just a projection and wishful cosplay thinking that looks nice on the paper and even may give warm fuzzy feeling, but not much more.

And I am old enough to know how many folks have some deep issue (usually some unresolved shit form childhood) that they sort of handle during normal days, but it comes back knocking on the door in less pleasant times. Also, for such long missions, one has to handle periods of boredom very well and be exceptionally well in tune with their inner self (for the lack of better words) - most folks reach for phone within 5 seconds of quiet time at the desk.

So your enthusiasm is commendable, but thats not how to select for such mission.

[lanstin]

I would never be chosen as an astronaut, but I have certainly had long periods of time doing difficult unrewarding and unrecognized work because I believed in the ends - as a stay at home parent, as a child that was being sexually and physically abused, and at a 1990s company undergoing sustained hypergrowth.

I have a lot of experience with operating with reasonableness and equanimity despite extreme fear and lots and lots of boredom.

No way to know of course what a Mars trip would be like, but i do confidently know myself and my ability to specifically handle long duration of isolation, boredom, and exacting operational requirements.

For sure I would volunteer. As would many.

[red-iron-pine]

> People assume they handle hardships one way, and then when SHTF and their mind starts coming off seams under severe stress and fear they often realize reality is someplace else.

to paraphrase a Lt Colonial I used to work for... "everyone is a tough guy until the mortars start getting close"

[IncreasePosts]

Have you ever undertaken a similar heroic task to have this wisdom or are you just assuming?

[vladms]

Humans as a species are rather adaptable (based on the number of climates and ways of life they adapted to on earth).

Finding the type of human that would thrive in the environment is a different story. Currently astronauts are highly selected (as the investment in them is huge) and the selection attributes might not be ideal with regard to psychosis. Probably one solution would be to make it that cheap to allow a significant sample of humans to go and see which one survives.

[cyjackx]

Surely if we made it cushy enough people wouldn't go crazy

[moron4hire]

Back around 2015, I did an experiment where I spent most of my working day in VR (mostly spent iterating on some interaction space designs in TiltBrush). I had many of those feelings directly after. It actually felt uncomfortable to be around people. It felt like everyone was too close and were about to clip though me at any second.

[bentcorner]

I spent about an hour in a VR entertainment space, where you donned a headset and played a game designed for a large play-space.

It was incredibly fun, but afterwards driving my car home I felt like the driving experience wasn't "real", and I had to put more conscious effort into my driving than usual to remain a safe driver. It took a few hours to wear away.

(This was a very distinct experience from what I have felt when binging a VR game like Half-Life: Alyx at home, where I get urges to teleport-move around my house and my hand-perception is off).

[ninjalanternshk]

Fascinating. I wonder what it would look like if you intentionally tried to create a VR experience optimized for creating this disruption. Does every game or experience have the same effect? If not what causes a greater or lesser impact on your senses?

[RazorBucksICO]

I grew up in a forested area. Anything more than a couple hundred feet away feels off or unreal. Deserts and mountains are surreal, like a painting.

[yellow_lead]

I was going to comment this also.

Drug use can also cause dpdr

[jongjong]

I guess in both cases, it's the result of the mind adapting to a strange environment. Once the strange environment becomes the new normal, the old (previously normal) environment seems strange.

Probably in the first few days in the submarine or space station, it feels strange but you don't pay so much attention to the feeling because you expect it; it's unfamiliar in every aspect so there is no internal dissonance. After coming back, the old environment feels different and that seems strange since you didn't expect it to feel different; it creates a dissonance between your body/senses/subconscious and your conscious mind. Your conscious mind hasn't changed but your senses and subconscious mind did. Going back to the old environment makes the change within you seem more obvious since you have a conscious frame of reference to compare it to.

This is probably why the conscious mind finds itself observing the work of the subconscious mind with skepticism. There is probably some kind of loss of trust since the conscious mind observes that things don't feel the same as last time despite knowing that they haven't actually changed.

[bflesch]

I wonder if there are technical factors for this such as 24/7 exposure to LED flickering or engine vibrations.

Also withdrawal from your social circle might be a factor, your body has time to wind down if you're not interacting with a certain set of people a day.