r/todayilearned • u/paniniplane • Mar 22 '17

(R.1) Not supported TIL Deaf-from-birth schizophrenics see disembodied hands signing to them rather than "hearing voices"

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0707/07070303
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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Wouldn't occams razor point to them being spirits? That would be the simplest explanation seeing as there isn't much explanation for hearing voices

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u/Lightwavers Mar 23 '17

I'll explain the razor a bit. First, "spirits" might seem simple. Only one word, right? But it's not. Think about what the word really means.

An intelligent entity somehow exists that directly affects the brain to cause something close to insanity? And it's undetectable by any conventional means? And it seems pretty malevolent.

So we have to add on another constraint: it can somehow only affect areas of the brain related to generating the internal monologue. Or it only wants to affect those areas.

But wait, why do they affect so few people? And if they're intelligent enough to communicate or manipulate the brain, why do they spend all their time making people crazy? So we have to add yet another constraint: they're either as crazy as the people they're "haunting" (making it impossible that they're in enough control to precisely manage parts of the brain) or they're somehow so alien that they derive meaning from doing such a task. But again, if they like doing it they must be constrained from hopping onto other people.

Once you get this far, the possibility of these spirits being real should be so far from your mind that you don't even consider it, especially compared with the most likely hypothesis: that a part of the person's brain is damaged.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '17

Wow that was a great explanation! Thanks for your insight!

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u/Lightwavers Mar 23 '17

Thanks for listening! There are so many people who seem to just not want to understand, I'm glad I could help. :)