h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is Deja Vu. You may already have read this posting - please do not adjust your monitors, though. If you have already responded to this posting, please do so again: your opinion matters. If you haven't yet responded to this posting, please do so: your opinion matters.

John Dunne wrote a book called "An Experiment with Time" in which he wrote down his dreams and checked them against real life. I have done the same, and have noticed the following sorts of dreams:
* Dreams which recur many times in one night or throughout my life
* Dreams which have occurences very similar to real life (different people but same outcome, for example)
* Dreams which exactly reproduce a scene from my life.
These dreams happen in either time-direction. I have noticed that some of the recurrent dreams are repeated - and also that there can be a feeling of repetition even the first time some occur, as if I remember future examples. On some occasions, I become more focussed on a small part of the dream, making this a larger part of the picture (as you would zoom in on a computer image). I notice this awareness during my sleep, so it becomes part of my dream.
The second sort of dream is more comfortable. This influences my general life to the extent where I have some idea where a conversation will end up, but I can change it.
I understand the third sort of dream to be Deja Vu. I suffer a moment of disorientation, then realise that I've "been here before". I might see a second-long repeat, for example someone moving a chess piece, or a thirty-second cut scene. I have no autonomy over this cut-scene - once I walked along a road, moving from side to side and even turning around, in an attempt to beat the memory. I must have looked very foolish, and what's worse is I recognised every moment, including the feeling of recognition and the feeling that I couldn't win back my independence.

x x Fenny (praying for Zero Intolerance)

You again!

How many times do you have to be told?


peace
jwf (playing with his smileys in the face of ...)

Occasionally, for about a thirty-second stretch, I've known EXACTLY (including what people say) what's going to happen about a half-second ahead of time. The prediction time is too short to do anything useful, except possibly win a coin toss, but it sure disorients me when it happens (and other people, when I say the same thing that they do at the exact same time--for a continuous period of time!) I also occasionally find myself saying, "Hi [name]!" to someone on the phone before they say anything. And no, I don't have caller ID.

-Twinkle, the semi-psychic

Oh, with the half-second prediction thing, the feeling is like everything that happens "reminds" me of what will happen next.

One theory about déja vu is as follows: your brain is constantly understanding the world around it by interpreting the signals it is getting in from your senses. But your brain is actually divided into two separate halves, which operate semi-independently. THere is a major communication channel between them (corpus callosum or something like that). The two halves of your brain work out what is going to happen next at slightly different times. The slower half, just as it figures out what is happening, gets the same information arriving at the same conclusion, passed over from the faster half. THis gives it the feeling that it has seen it all before.

I hate déja vu. It feels to me like being clamped in a giant vice of predestination, where everything I do has happened before and I have no control. It makes me feel literally sick. Luckily it rarely lasts more than about 20 seconds and doesn't happen too often.

I understand the two halves to a brain theory, but that doesn't explain this one: I'd dreamt in about June time that I was still working in the same store at Halloween and while I dreamed this I was thinking "god if this is deja vu, does that mean I'll still be stuck in this daft store at Halloween?" and felt a bit poo. Of course, when the trigger came (I call it that cuz there seems to be one thing that happens that suddenly brings the dream flashing back), I was still working in the store, and remembered asking myself the question, and realised yes I was still in the dappy store, and felt poo.

The point to that being that when I experience Deja Vu, I can usually remember roughly how long ago I dreamt of the occasion, it can be weeks to years ago.

I understand your feeling of fate Gnomon, and have pondered myself that if I'm dreaming of future visions, what's the point of bothering when it's all planned out? But I came to the conclusion that, as we very rarely remember these things until they actually happen, we could be dreaming countless different possible events, a myriad of different futures, but we only remember the ones that actually occur. All the other possible dreams we may have had of different futures, we never remember, cuz we've made different choices, and they haven't happened.


Does this make about as much sense as a fish on a bicycle?

But that's not Deja Vu. Deja Vu is not experiencing something and remembering having dreamt about it. Deja Vu is experiencing something and feeling that it happened before in exactly the same way, even though it is quite obvious it could not have done. The dream thing is something else.

I thought that deja vu was caused by the current sensory input reverberating around ones memory circuits quickly so that it feels strongly as though what is happening has happened before in exactly the same way. It is like you have a memory of what is happening right now although you don't really.

I don't think "deja vu" has a definition other than "I think I've been here before". I don't recall ever seeing anything that pinned it down any single reason for thinking so. Even here, the original post was specifically about dreams, yet a later one said that dreams were different from deja vu.

On the subject of the original post, if I ever find myself in real life in a situation I dreamed, I'm going to be seriously worried, because my dreams throw logic to the winds. My standard example is one in which I was in a submarine cruising along underwater, which then stopped, and the crew climbed out onto a country road in the middle of a field. I've had other dreams with even less connection with real life. (In fact, for me, it's surprising when anything from real life appears in my dreams.)

*Docketer Segment Freudulant enters, peeks over his specs and begins to pontificate*

"Ze cow patties in ze field of dreams and ze submarine are b..."

*rocks, bottles and the odd bullet are hurled at the Docketer by a large crowd of former patients led by jwf shouting*

There he is boys. Let's get the b*****d once and for all!

*Docketer exits hastily, followed by a sleepless, angry mob*

There he goes. After him...

I deja vu quite a bit, its always from dreams, which can happen months or years before the event

Deja vu, eh? Has it happened before?

I'd swear I've made this post before.

I'd swear I've made this post before.

I'd swear I've made this post before.

Deja vu aint't what it used to be.

I'd swear I've made this post before.

Ooh look!

Literally, "deja vu" means "already seen"

B

talking of dreams i get 1 that is the same but different if that makes sense

some one always wakes me & takes me to different places although i know its the same person i can never see them but in all the different places they take me to its the same symbols & strange writing that they show me, i know one day i will understand all of this & i know when that time comes i will know what the symbols & writings mean, so when that day comes can i call that "deja vu"?

romani

**walks into thread**


**aims gun at Master B**





**Blows into the barrel**

**Walks out of the thread without saying a word**