“Out of body” experience induced — no soul or God needed

Scientists have found a way to induce “out of body” experience in a purely naturalistic manner, simply by using virtual reality goggles.

In the studies published in Thursday’s Science journal, two teams of researchers managed to induce the effect in healthy people by scrambling their senses of vision and touch with the aid of the goggles.

“We ... describe an illusion during which healthy participants experienced a virtual body as if it were their own, and localized their ‘selves’ outside their body borders at a different position in space,” wrote Olaf Blanke, a researcher at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland.

One team, led by Henrik Ehrsson at University College London, had volunteers sit in a chair in the middle of a room wearing virtual-reality goggles showing the view from a video camera placed behind them.

A researcher moved a rod up to the camera at the same time as the person's chest was touched, and then the rod disappeared from view.

This created the illusion that the person was sitting a few steps back, where the camera stood.

In Blanke's experiment, subjects wearing virtual-reality goggles watched an image of a mannequin representing their own body placed directly in front of them while a researcher scratched their back.

Afterwards, the volunteers were blindfolded and guided backwards. When they were asked to return to their original positions, they went toward the place where they had seen their virtual body — the mannequin.

The researchers said mixing up the senses of sight and touch was key to the experiments.

As the story notes, the studies could shed more light on the sense of one’s self, from the basic proprioception, or knowing where one’s body is in relation to exterior space, to the grounding of a psychological self that has given rise to ideas of a “soul.”

The ignorance or cluelessness of experimental economists about music

Apparently experimental economists have either never heard of, or are totally clueless about, the old maxim de gustibus non disputandum,; otherwise, we wouldn’t have nutbar experiments like
this, trying to determine which of AC/DC’s two lead singers, Brian Johnson or Bon Scott, is better on the basis of student’s economic efficiency while listening to each one of them.

As I posted on Washington Monthly, where I first read this:

Look at the world of classical music and try this same experiment. I'm sure I would be more economically efficient listening to Leopold Mozart than to Stravinsky, due to Stravinsky's dissonance, instrumental timbre combinations, polyrhythms, etc.

Snarkily rebutting a claim that AA is “secular”

An acquaintance of mine, at a conference, ran into an apparently long-term AA member who defended, probably vociferously, the idea that Alcoholics Anonymous is a secular organization.

Just how did he defend the idea that AA is secular? Your “higher power” can be a doorknob? I know people everywhere at the end of AA meetings don’t actually pray the religious Lord's Prayer, but instead:

Our doorknob who art on the door
Hallowed be thy brass;
Thy key tumbler work;
Thy doors open quickly, at home as at work.
Give us this day our daily security;
Forgive us our fumbled keys
As we forgive others who drop theirs, too.
Lead us not into stripped-out locks,
But deliver a locksmith quickly.
For thine is the safety, and the reliability, and the universality.
Namaste.

Prayer vs. self-insight in decision-making

I’ve long and often said, in riffing on the classical Western religious description of prayer as a “heart-to-heart talk with god,” that it’s really a “heart-to-heart talk with one’s self.”

First of all, once you recognize and accept that, even if you still believe in some sort of deity, you can’t pray to him/her/it; certainly not in the way you considered prayer to be before this light went on.

The flip side, though, of losing out on the belief of being able to tap into god as “deus quam machina,” no matter how capricious this machine is, one gets the empowerment, small as it may be, of being able to look to one’s own self for insight.

But, the flip side of that is that any decisions one makes can no longer be passed off, or buck-passed, to somebody else, as in “I thought god was telling me to, …” (Of course, if you still believe in a critter “downstairs,” you still have recourse to the infamous “the devil made me do it” plea.)

For me, probably in part as a reaction to events of childhood, I have trouble decision-making anyway. In part, it’s a fear of somebody — god (in my pre-conversion days), a boss, some other authority figure, or someone else to be affected by my decision — judging or criticizing me for making that decision. In fact, often, the decision itself isn’t the problem; facing up to the consequences, including this judgment, is.

And, now, I don’t have any god as daddy the tear-wiper, daddy the hand-holder, or daddy the giant daddy to make it all go away, to comfort me.

I have me, and human friend to whom to talk these fears out.

On the other hand, a god both omnipotent and omnibenevolent by definition can’t have an experiential concept of evil, psychological pain or sorrow anyway, and so is of limited use as a hand-holder.

All in all, lumps unfortunately included, I’m better off wrestling with my decision-making on the only plane I know we actually have, with the only, limited, human help I know is actually available.

Disingeniousness alert — Martin Novak

Biologist Martin Novak likens religious statements to mathematical ones for not needing scientific confirmation:

“Like mathematics, many theological statements do not need scientific confirmation. Once you have the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, it’s not like we have to wait for the scientists to tell us if it’s right. This is it.”

Err, mathematical statements DO do need mathematical confirmation, though, in a process every bit as rigorous as the scientific process.

If Novak can point me to a “religious confirmation process” that meets the same standards, I’ll eat my hat.

Priming behavior study gaining speed

As this Washington Post story shows, priming behavior is one of the greatest illustrations of the power, depth and breadth of the subconscious mind. In other words, Dan Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained,” even if it has the right theory, explains only about 10-20 percent of the mind anyway.

Roy Baumeister compares the subconscious to the conscious as hot-wiring a car vs. using keys in the ignition.

Mark Shaller has more:

“Sometimes nonconscious effects can be bigger in sheer magnitude than conscious ones because we can’t moderate stuff we don’t have conscious access to, and the goal stays active.”

I’ve never believed the Hindu/New Age claim that we only use 10 percent of our brains. However, it might be true that only 10 percent of our mind is conscious.

Priming behavior study gaining speed

As this Washington Post story shows, priming behavior is one of the greatest illustrations of the power, depth and breadth of the subconscious mind. In other words, Dan Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained,” even if it has the right theory, explains only about 10-20 percent of the mind anyway.

Roy Baumeister compares the subconscious to the conscious as hot-wiring a car vs. using keys in the ignition.

Mark Shaller has more:

“Sometimes nonconscious effects can be bigger in sheer magnitude than conscious ones because we can’t moderate stuff we don’t have conscious access to, and the goal stays active.”

I’ve never believed the Hindu/New Age claim that we only use 10 percent of our brains. However, it might be true that only 10 percent of our mind is conscious.