What he's talking about here is "cliche", but cliche's have themselves become so cliche, it's no longer effective to use that term to describe them.
This same phenomenon is found extremely widely in literature and music. I stumbled onto this following college, after being trained to have a critical eye for creative work, when I found myself hating everything that humans produced but not understanding why.
My personal theory is that 1) we've not yet learned to teach creators how to identify and cultivate truly unique ideas, and 2) the structure of our current systems for fostering creative work require said work to appeal fundamentally to the largest possible audience, which is easiest when a universal language (visual, auditory or written) exists.
We're trained to build on existing ideas, which is critical for success, but not how to reject established ideas and instead find new ones that are capable of maintaining familiarity, or communicating their core concepts without need of educating the audience.
It's an interesting evolution of process that I'm sure we can find in other areas of the human experience, beyond the field of creative media.

I remember when my brother had to have a psych evaluation, he told me that one of the questions they asked was "Do you see and hear things that other people don't see and hear?"
I realized it was good I wasn't the one being evaluated, because I see and hear things other people don't see and hear all the time, whenever I'm alone for instance, and often when I'm with others if I'm looking at or listening to something no one else is. That answer wouldn't go over well, I'm fairly certain.

I often wonder if auditory hallucinations that are not verbal or in any way communicative are indicative of anything important or worrying. I often can hear phantom music or phantom unintelligibly quiet talk radio in white noise, which defeats the main purpose of the white noise (made by a loud air filter), which is to drowned out all distracting noises so I can sleep.

OK. Looking extremely closely and using paper to block out the image, I have to say they fudged things on some of them.
I saw two grey pills the whole time.
The colored tiles fade to grey as they "mask off" the other tiles, they start no where near the shade of grey they end up as, their color has faded a lot in the process.
The grey tiles on the floor also change shades as they are 'masked off' quite clearly. I went 1/4 speed, and also tried masking them off myself, they clearly faked this one.
I put a straight edge on the checker board and sure enough, those lines are slightly curved....just barely but they are.
The two table tops are NOT the same size at first, I measured and the vertical table is definitely longer on the long side. That one's obvious. (EDIT:I'm wrong about that)
The spinning dots does work for me, as do convex images and auditory illusions.
So I'm not ready to call 'fake' on this, but IMO it's fudged badly.

BTW, I wanted to add a small comment at the end of this. Something I didn't add back then (but, looking back upon it, I think I should have).

It is regarding the little comment I mad e about feeling a connection to "something" bigger than me, then describing what this "feeling" was like.

I wanted to make it clear that the human mind, our testimony, and our eye-witness accounts are very, very undependable... A sad, but absolute truth.

Most cases that have been thrown out of court later on--once new evidence is brought to light; like DNA evidence--has shown over and over again that in many of these cases, the "victims" or prisoners sent to jail--for doing nothing--were sent there almost entirely on eye-witness testimony and accounts. Then the DNA shows that their entire "story" (because that IS exactly what it should be called), merely served as a way to put an innocent man in jail, and to keep that DA/prosecutor's record as close to "awesome" as possible (because we really DO care FAR too much about a DA's record than whether the person being prosecuted should actually be here, let alone if they are guilty or not). The defense attorney has the same problem; I'm not really sure WE should care about these things (only so much as to whether the state IS actually bringing cases to court that SHOULD be there...).

I have severe sleep apnea and also narcolepsy. With this I get sleep paralysis (basically every night) and an extreme amount of hypnagogic hallucinations (more than powerful enough that i fully understand why many believe in both ghosts and aliens--amongst other creatures). The "feeling" and situation I described above can very easily be traced back into this little issue of mine. It creates everything you could imagine--I even had a hypnagogic hallucination powerful enough that it felt as though someone or something was trying to yank me "through" my bed (hello, Nightmare On Elm Street"--I was actually more intrigued by the event than anything else, akin to a researcher). While most people would have run yelling from there house, or at the least gone to get comfort and forgone sleeping in that room AND bed for quite sometime...I went right back to sleep.

This is why KNOWING what you are up against, what it can do to you, and how powerful it really can be (especially on your psyche and even your physical state is very important...). I knew all of this before it ever happened AND I had also noticed the hypnagogic hallucinations doing A LOT of very small auditory based things--all the time--to me, but they sounded realistic (like dogs barking off in the distance, people whispering outside your window...across the street, telephones ringing upstairs, people you know talking or saying things--like your name--sometimes to the point that you have to ask them if they called for you...and YES you do feel like an idiot, but if everyone knows your physical problems, due to the sleep disorders, they understand what it going on, and can laugh with you when it happens--EVEN the scary ones).

Sleep paralysis happens to be when your body tries to wake up, but it doesn't quite get there. hence you end up in a state were you are both awake and asleep at the same time (dreaming to be accurate). These events have a tendency to be a bit like the hypnagogic hallucinations, in that they can seem real, since you are half-awake. History has a great many examples of SP--the ones that don't seem that scary, like visiting angels. To those that can create bone-chilling "ghost stories", like demons and succubi. There is a very famous painting of a "breath-stealing" demon, depicting a SP event (many people did in fact DIE in their sleep from "lack of breathing", this is where SP fiction AND the reality of many of the SP sufferers having severe sleep apnea--something fully unknown in that day and age--were not taken into account, and instead it was a demon! Many people that DO have sleep paralysis events have dreams and dream like events that are close to and resemble each other, so there must be a basic psychological connection in the formation of many of these dreams--even space alien abductions seem to have this same thing in common...

So when a big SP or hypnagogic hallucination comes along, and just by chance it happens to mix with each either (if you suffer both), you can get some truly panic inducing events (go look these up, if you don't understand why they could be so panic inducing--you'll understand pretty quick why they SUCK; luckily, as I've gotten older my mind has created two ways to deal with sleep paralysis events; the first it created, and I don't know how to be honest, is that I realize in these "half-dreams" that if I relax I will gain all of my abilities back...sure enough it works every time, but it can be VERY hard to do this when you have a pure-evil, shadow of fear standing 10 feat from you; then lately...and I think this happened literally due to the shear volume and amount of SP events I've had...I can basically FORCE myself to move again through willpower alone, allowing me to wake up as well--doing this actually feels "odd", it feels uncomfortable, like you are "going against the grain" and then suddenly breaking through a wall that wasn't allowing you to do what you wanted; so I imagine this "ability" forcefully allows me to make my body stop it's "protective" mode that it is in as you sleep and it is ALSO what causes the "paralysis" in all sleep paralysis vents...it is just your body doing what it should)...

Also, from what I've noticed, it seems to me that almost all hallucinations at some level are directly linked with whatever in the mind allows us to dream or create very vivid "imaginations". Both my sleep paralysis events AND especially my hypnagogic hallucinations, accompanied by the fact that I have indeed ran into "run of the mill" hallucinations (caused by adverse effects from medical prescriptions in the past), they ALL seem to be essentially linked together from what I noticed. I'd have to look around and see if there are others that have as many vantage points as I do, and also agree that they seem linked.

Throughout history people have seen these two aspects as something they absolutely are not OR not even close too! Yet FAR too many people don't ask the absolutely obvious question that they ALWAYS should have! Why, do ghost, aliens, demons, angels, you name it, show up at NIGHT (or for those that have odd sleep schedules: when you are TIRED or about to SLEEP--or just have...)?!? The answer should, indeed, be obvious... All of these things have to do WITH our sleep or something with our ability TO sleep (you don't necessarily need to be asleep or need to have just woken up for this stuff to happen to you; my narcolepsy shows this is absolutely true--as I can get hypnagogic hallucinations at ANY time of the day, sometimes without warning). The creatures and gods we have created do indeed exist, but they are located at the border between where our brain can see clearly and when our brain could use some rest--then we all live in our dreams.

So, be careful about how much stock you put into anything you believe is true, especially because you "believe" you have witnessed or experienced something magnificent... Believe it or not, seeing is NOT believing! Science always had the right idea, you MUST allow others to confirm what you found, and if they cannot find it--no matter even IF you "found it"--you might need to be able to accept the harsh reality that somehow you didn't see or experience what you thought you did (but, it can still be amazing)...

This just seems too far fetched at the moment. The number of variables and situations to consider, the speed of execution required, the level of reliability ... it just seems too much for today's processing power.

I mean, take something like speech recognition as an example. Computer processing continues to fail at even this. The visual spectrum is much more complex than the auditory, which is largely just wavelength and amplitude.

To jump straight into something like that, with life or death ramifications ... I just don't see them jumping to production any time in the next decade.

Sadly, another true great leaves the stage. Not many left. Will sit down later and watch the awesome visual/auditory feast that is "Lawrence of Arabia."

Great comment! You raised many interesting points.

One important thing to note that the modern human mind is essentially like an advanced piece of software which runs on antiquated hardware (sort of like running Skyrim on an N64). As many as 7% (though I don't currently have a source for this at hand) of the general population are estimated to experience auditory hallucinations, and surprisingly enough, most of those people aren't psychotically structured. This is why auditory hallucinations are seen as a secondary, rather than primary, symptom of schizophrenia.

Rather, what is actually happening is that the antiquated hardware, for whatever reason, is showing its faults. The primitive responses which tend to stay dormant for most people are finding their way to the surface.

In other words, the truth of schizophrenia is that it isn't so much an illness as it is a regression to a more primitive version of the human mind. And as both you an Eleanor pointed out, this can have both pros and cons. Another example of a broken system which can produce contextually positive results is eidetic memory, which causes a person to be unable to forget.

And this is also something that I find to be quite interesting, because what it means is that mental illnesses are, in fact, contextual illnesses. A schizophrenic person is essentially "sick" because he/she has a bug in his/her software and as a result is unable to download patches from the rest of society. Go back 3000 years and it is entirely possible that auditory hallucination would have been the norm.

The reason for the stigma being so harmful is that it simply focuses on the wrong thing. It takes a secondary symptom, i.e. hearing voices, and makes it seem like the actual disease. In truth, the auditory hallucination is just an externalized version of a process which is actually internal. Where most of us simply have thoughts, the schizophrenic might instead hear a voice. To turn stigmatize those auditory hallucinations is to potentially cripple the sufferer's ability to perform basic maintenance on themselves.

MY EARS! I'm going to hell because of you, she devil! GAH! I practiced celibacy and was home schooled to avoid any auditory temptations but now I'm ruined. Raped. Ear RAPED. Fucked in the ears.

And now I have no choice but to become the beast I always feared. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK ME JESUS

Souls! Feed me souls! BLlaefoiugrbsrgbsgrubs -- and now I transform into my final form to destroy the sanctity of life and shatter the world. Laying siege to all holy lands! Nothing is sacred, all life is to be extinguished, and suffering will be endless. ENDLESS!!!!!

Millions, billions, trillions, untold time passes; dimensions crossed, the very meaning of ALL unraveled and laid forth, meaningless. Meaningless! All conflict, all freedoms, all philosophy is now folly; unnecessary as a multiuniversal nihilism cascades across the boundaries of consciousness. The godheads destroyed, their corpses rotting the core beyond ALL.

Blackness.

Void.

Nirvana crumbles and the enlightened turned against the balance. Yahweh screams in horror, corrupted and turned into a tentacle demon to rape its devoted followers. Ra's phallus goes limp. Baal is ground into an all beef hamburger patty. Shiva, Vishnu, Devi, Surya and Ganesha warp into a single form, becoming the Eye of Saron. The reptilians of earth devolve into alligators, and the greys become monkeys.

There is no shelter because there is only horror. For all eternity, in all realities.

Sorry, that's just my interpretation of the reporter's reaction.

upvote denied due to auditory vomit induced by the Pretty Lights soundtrack.

>> ^grinter:

>> ^charliem:
So what hes saying is that our ear does a physical Fourier transform on the auditory signals its receiving.......cool!

Well, yes! The tonotopic mapping of the cochlea is kindof like that. When you start considering all of the other signal processing 'tricks' the auditory system uses (frequency dependent filtering, neural integration on spacial and temporal scales, otoacoustic emissions, etc) it gets way cooler! I just wish I could find an animation for those.


not sure about animation, but vihart's video goes into more detail on this

http://videosift.com/video/Vi-Hart-What-is-up-with-Noises

it makes for a good follow-up

Wonderful. I wish it had continued on to primary auditory cortex.

Everyone should learn the fundamentals of sensation and perception -- truly fucking incredible.

>> ^charliem:

So what hes saying is that our ear does a physical Fourier transform on the auditory signals its receiving.......cool!

Well, yes! The tonotopic mapping of the cochlea is kindof like that. When you start considering all of the other signal processing 'tricks' the auditory system uses (frequency dependent filtering, neural integration on spacial and temporal scales, otoacoustic emissions, etc) it gets way cooler! I just wish I could find an animation for those.

So what hes saying is that our ear does a physical Fourier transform on the auditory signals its receiving.......cool!

Yup, you're wasting your time. You will propose rational arguments and reason... Shiny will respond with religious dogma. Rinse, repeat, bang head on desk.

You cannot reason with blind faith.

But as you are blind, Shiny, others will continue to look and poke in those dark places you claim your god exists. The light of our inquiry and skepticism will illuminate that which is hidden in your god's domain. We will take it from your god and convert it to science. You will be painted ever further into the corner of your own ignorance until such a point that you have no ground upon which to stand. While you remain rigid in your unquestioning belief, we will seek understanding and truth and know them by their ability to stand up to scientific inquiry.

No god can hide from science. And someday we will place those that are left, like toys long outgrown, on a shelf... along with those gods from the past which you yourself do not believe in.

In all seriousness though, if you've heard or are hearing the voice(s) of your god, you might want to look into the possibility that you have schizophrenia, Shiny. This is not a jab or an attempt to imply that you are mentally unstable, but actual concern. The reality is that there are numerous sufferers of schizophrenia who hear auditory hallucinations, some of these take the form of "God". Something to consider.

>> ^EMPIRE:

Guys... seriously? You're still responding to Shiny Blurry?. You're wasting your time trying to stuff some knowledge into a black hole of ignorance.