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- Hacker News
- I've found positive forms of this or similar sensations/realizations after heavy/frequent travel too:
You know how, right now, you could think of a familiar street or neighborhood in your town/city, and you'd know exactly how it must be like at this minute?
Like, "I should go to the cafe", or the mall, or the square, or Bob's house
and you already know what the vibe is there at any given time
After traveling to several different countries back-to-back and living for about a month in each, I have this weird thing now, that I could be sitting in Singapore, and feel like I could step outside my hotel and be in Tokyo, Japan..
I know how Shibuya or Akihabara is right now at this very moment, or Delhi, India, like those cities are right outside my door, even though I'm tens of thousands of kilometers away.
The world becomes one continuous blur. And it's only recently in human history that ordinary people can get to travel so easily. What's amazing is how the richest and most powerful people among us, who have seen it all and can go anywhere anytime, seem to be so dour and mean and short-sighted.. :')
by Razengan - I have to admit that I did read all of that even though it felt like something that was written by or with the assistance of an AI. A little repetitious in places, making or trying to make the same point as if it becomes true if you repeat it often enough.
True or not, it would make a great premise for an astronaut or space travel movie, to see everything transpire from a detached perspective. That's all I got right now.
- I thought this was going to be about feeling watched, reminding me of philip k dick but it's more like being john malkovich which might be scarierby NopIdoN
- That would be closer to the third man effect:by GolfPopper
- This article recalls the Steven Wright joke:
“I woke up one morning, and all of my stuff had been stolen and replaced by exact duplicates.
I couldn't believe it.
I called my roommate in and said, 'Come here, look at this stuff, it's all an exact replica. What do you think?'
He said, 'Do I know you?'”
by smitty1e - I feel some of that when I return from international trips. Like an outsider looking in. Not to the same degree as what the article describes though.
Being in a different culture, hearing and speaking a different language, different foods, sights, and smells. Then a day of travel later on the return and everything familiar feels oddly new and the same. While dealing with sleep deprevation on top of that because I can't easily sleep more than an hour at a time on airplanes.
by hn937758 - I have worked remotely for years after being in the office for years and I get a similar feeling when I go back twice a year. Nothing really has changed but to me it's sort of new so the overall feeling is pretty surreal.
Same feeling when I go back to the village I grew up in. I have been away for decades but at the same time nothing and a lot has changed.
by vjvjvjvjghv - I used to spend weeks outdoors in the wilderness without ever entering a building (I would sleep in a small tent) and I used to have a similar range of sensations when coming back home and/or going into an enclosed building for the first time. This used to last maybe for a couple days.
Two more things that I used to experience, which are not among the phenomena described in the article, is that I was hyper aware of how sound echoed through a room, and I used to be hyper aware of how hard the floor was (carpeted floors are not common where I grew up, most rooms have tiled floors) I guess these two are something specific to the outdoor->indoor change and so they don't apply to astronauts.
by mastazi
Ok, you nerd sniped me here. Did you ever write (or blog) about these experiences? If not, I would highly encourage it. Example questions that I have: Where/When/Why? What seasons? How did you eat? Toilet? It would be a star submission on HN and would surely generate lots of exciting commentary.> I used to spend weeks outdoors in the wilderness without ever entering a building- My wife informed me that I always comment on the hardness of the floor, regardless of where we are. (I will take off my footwear to stand on novel surfaces with my bare feet. Situationally, ofc.)
Anyways, there's dozens of us!
by TimedToasts - The mind works with benchmarks on a constant basis. Everything is a comparison - to your prior experiences, other people's experiences, your identity, etc etc etc
Introducing a new benchmark creates a new perspective to measure old perspectives against. In essence, de-sycing your perceptions of self, reality, etc until the new and old normalize out.
(You see this with psychedelics a lot which is why it can be such a valuable therapy for depression and PTSD)
It is no wonder that being put in a giant space bullet, shot into the darkness of space, with the light of your world reflected back at you like the ultimate out of body experience leads to an "observer" sensation.
by homeonthemtn - As a high-functioning autistic person, the description of being “a half-step outside the frame” perfectly captures the way I live.
I am, and have always been, aware that I am experiencing the world and my own sense of self slightly removed from how people typically experience the world. It is very much like playing a first-person game with the POV set so the view is through the character’s eyes, but you remain aware that you are controlling an avatar in the game nonetheless.
Edit: interesting how they describe the degraded sense of proprioception as part of the cause, given it is often a problem for autistics.
- I am in the middle of trying to be diagnosed in my 40s, and am glad to have come across your comment because this summarises a life-long feeling. The complete inability to relate to what most people enjoy (communal activities where the joy is deduced from being in a mob) and inability to be understood 95% of the time (they hear things other than what I say, since they hear "intent") is extremely wearying. Masking means I perpetually pretend to be like everyone else and I feel like a passenger in my own life most of the time.
In very traumatic or severely stressful stages of life, the depersonalisation was very bad and I wouldn't really see "me" in a mirror or recognise my hand as being my own.
Avoiding people (and only being involved in quiet natural environments - I write this at home in the garden surrounded by plants) seems to have helped a lot but does anything else help? I have been doing things I enjoy more, even if they are mostly solitary. (My wife is very accommodating).
I find I don't emotionally engage with most experiences, so most of my memories are "seen" in the third person (I see myself doing the activities) and I am struggling to overcome this sensation. I film and photograph a lot so that I can "relive" the events, but if anyone has any alternative tips I'd appreciate them.
by 72deluxe - I had a similar reaction to this article. "Why are they talking about these returned astronauts feeling like I feel all the time?"
I recently got diagnosed with ADHD after talking with a doctor on my wife's insistence after she looked up symptoms and spent days arguing with me that I was a walking example of them, and I suspect I have mild autistic traits as well (not diagnosed and not gonna self-diagnose without more confidence).
I'll raise your video game analogy with my pinball analogy: you press some buttons and some flappers move, and off your life goes careening around some path until you once again get an opportunity to press some buttons. The ball almost never goes where you want or expect it, but it's sure interesting and shiny to watch.
- This somewhat reminds me of the cognitive layers as understood by Nisargadatta Maharaj.
»The body appears in your mind, your mind is the content of your consciousness; you are the motionless witness of the river of consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any way. Your own changelessness is so obvious that you do not notice it.« —Nisargadatta Maharaj
We are usually submerged and self-identify with what is known experience and therefore rarely ever question it. When the lived context of the cognitive environment we take for granted profoundly changes in unexpected and not yet experienced ways the absence of being submerged into the known emerges. And then the so called witness state of perception is suddenly obvious.
I have felt this many times after extended travels and stays in other cultural spheres where other languages (which I manage fine) are spoken.
by axiologist - Being an astronaut seems cognitively expensive. Your time is regimented down to the minute. Your space is regimented down to the inch. The things you bring up and down, including yourself, is measured to the pound. I would imagine you have to constantly be evaluating, assessing, and thinking critically about everything you do all the time. And then to suddenly not have to do that and just live in the moment has to be a massive readjustment.by CoolestBeans
- Your comment lead me down a rabbit hole of space micromanagement. OSTPV (onboard short-term planner viewer) is the software they use to basically schedule every minute of your space flight. Basically every day someone from earth decides what you do, when you eat, when you exercise and will make changes in realtime.
Great read here with a video of someone using the actual software: https://blogs.esa.int/iriss/2015/09/09/playing-with-playbook...
by mstank - There's a popular clip from Joe Rogan out there where he says "Be the hero of your own movie. If your life was a movie and it started now. ... What would the hero of your life’s movie do right now? Do that. Do those things."
So it's interesting that this cognitive state is helpful for some people to visit in a transient or metaphorical way but becomes weird when it's persistent. But it does seem potentially related in that maybe it originates from a kind of conscientiousness in the astronaut profession
by firasd - You gotta fight for time to use the restroom even: https://idlewords.com/shepard_pee.htm I mean it makes sense in a way. It's probably more cost effective to have 100 people on the ground spreadsheeting out your entire day to the minute than have 1 astronaut hour spent planning, but it would probably drive me completely insane. Reminds me of that story about the earring that slowly absorbs your mind as you let it make every single decision for you: https://gwern.net/doc/fiction/science-fiction/2012-10-03-yva...
- 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.by labrador - I was going to comment this also.
Drug use can also cause dpdr
by yellow_lead - 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.
by bflesch - 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.
by beedeebeedee - 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.by moron4hire
- 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.
by jongjong - The observer effect, depersonalization and derealization sound a lot like how many mystical traditions describe awakening of Self-realizationby an0malous
- Moving this out of a subthread, but I can't find any sources corroborating the the phenomenon described in this article. In fact a lot of the literature from NASA seems to explicitly contradict the claims in the article[0][1]. Obviously not dispositive, but this article reads to me at least partially like AI confabulation. Perhaps my Google-fu is lacking here but I had Claude do a search as well for good measure and couldn't find any supporting evidence that way either. Without the author offering more primary sources I would advise against placing too much if any stock in this piece.
[0] https://humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov/Evidence/reports/BMed.... [1] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-30583-2_...
by DAlperin - Seemingly unrelated, I just saw some post on /new that was saying Dunning-Kruger had been debunked by some recent study. It looked pretty sus so I kagi'ed it and lo and behold guess what came up:
https://spacedaily.com/j-v-the-dunning-kruger-effect-mapped-...
by rfarley04 - All these links are not working to meby bromuro
- Yep, the article doesn't have a single link reference supporting its claims, and of the four (unnecessary) links in the article, one doesn't say anything related to the text link.by tecleandor