Comments on: What Universal Human Experiences Are You Missing Without Realizing It?

By: Neon Fox

Neon Fox — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 14:05:58 +0000

It’s a bad idea to tickle me; I will reflexively and uncontrollably attempt to hurt anyone who does. Sometimes I can stop once I figure out what’s going on and if the tickler is someone I like, but I will always react first with violence. I have no idea why; it’s not like tickling is painful or anything.

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By: Timothy

Timothy — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 01:32:59 +0000

I have the same problem. In any serious conversation, I’ll have long pauses as I gather my thoughts. I also frequently begin sentences with “So…”

A couple of my friends tell me that they appreciate how I stop and think before I speak, and they seem to act similarly. Maybe you just need to find other people like that.

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By: Ialdabaoth

Ialdabaoth — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 01:16:53 +0000

Interestingly, I’ve been experiencing *romantic* attraction since I was six, but I never experienced *sexual* attraction until I was about 18.

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By: Timothy

Timothy — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 00:06:41 +0000

I think I experienced romantic attraction for the first time I was 18. But at the time, I didn’t quite understand what it was. It took me another year and a half to figure that out.

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By: Timothy

Timothy — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 23:53:46 +0000

I just got a perfect score on the color test, and it only took me 10 minutes.

I did notice that once I got close to finishing, sometimes I could tell a sequence was wrong, but I wasn’t sure what change to make. I think my brain was determining whether a color was right by averaging the two adjacent colors.

But once I had the right sequence, I tried flipping random pairs, and I could tell which way was correct.

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By: James James

James James — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 14:11:45 +0000

But yes, I’ve heard of cases where stroke patients could sing words but not speak them.

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By: James James

James James — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 14:10:29 +0000

Interesting, because it is speculated (e.g. in McGilchrist: “The Master and his Emissary”) that language evolved from music (see “musilanguage”). The nerve required for humans to make complex sounds, evolved before language did.

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By: Tab Atkins

Tab Atkins — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 02:10:56 +0000

Yeah, I do that too. Agree that it’s not synesthesia, or at least doesn’t sound like it based on what other people describe their synesthesia as being like. But I definitely often get an internal sound when imagining things going through state changes like that. Mine’s more of a “boop” or “doop” usually, but same thing.

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By: nydwracu

nydwracu — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:41:18 +0000

Here’s one I’m not sure about.

My ecig has five lights on it to indicate charge, and when it charges, the lights turn on in a certain pattern: if it’s at no charge, the first one lights up, then the second, and so on until they’re all lit up, and then they clear and that repeats; if it’s at two lights of charge, the bottom two lights are always on, but the third one lights up, then the third and fourth, then the third, fourth, and fifth, then they all clear and it repeats; and so on.

I just plugged it in to charge, looked at it until it completed a cycle, then looked away and replayed the sounds in my head to figure out what level of charge it was at. Beep beep beep beep, two lights of charge.

It doesn’t actually make any sound.

I don’t think it’s synesthesia — I ‘hear’ it the same way I can replay music in my head, or imagine people speaking; it doesn’t register as an actual sound coming from the outside world. But the recall was entirely auditory: I didn’t visualize anything.

Does anyone else do that?

(Incidentally, there was a discussion on this a while back on #lesswrong and apparently some people replay music in their head, or at least not at good quality. I can even write music in real-time in my head at fairly good quality, but I can never get it down on paper.)

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By: CAE_Jones

CAE_Jones — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 22:18:42 +0000

I’m similar, and I count this as one of the reasons I’ve become less and less talkative with time: more spur-of-the-moment screwups make me try to think things through more, then opportunities cruise by. It was bad enough that someone suggested I see a speech pathologist, who suggested I use more filler phrases and ask for time to think if a few “Umm…”s were insufficient. I’m not sure this has helped–I mostly still have to default to saying poorly thought-out, not infrequently disastrous things if I want to participate in a conversation at all.
This works with the internet as well, but with the bonus that, if I catch myself in time, I can remember I don’t have a strict time limit and can try and edit. I’ve traditionalyl failed at said planning more often than not, but frequently embarrassing myself in the rationalsphere has me being more cautious lately.

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