4.1 Post summary / Table of contents

This is the fourth of a series of eight blog posts, which I’m serializing weekly. (Or email or DM me if you want to read the whole thing right now.)

“Trance” is an umbrella term for various states of consciousness in which “you lose yourself”, somehow. The first kind that I learned about was hypnotic trance, as depicted in the media:

With examples like that, I quite naturally assumed that hypnotism was fictional.

Other types of trance, particularly “spirit possession” in traditional cultures (e.g. Haitian Vodou), and New Age “channeling”, initially struck me as equally fictional—especially the wild claim that people would “wake up” from their hypnotic or other trance with no memory of what just happened. But when I looked into it a bit more, I found myself believing that these are indeed real experiences, even if I couldn’t explain [...]

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Outline:

(00:05) 4.1 Post summary / Table of contents

(04:14) 4.2 Background context: The subtle art of changing an intuitive model

(04:22) 4.2.1 Back to bistable perception

(05:24) 4.2.2 Shifting intuitive models is like herding cats: hard but possible

(06:50) 4.3 Background notation: S(⋯) and D(⋯)

(09:06) 4.4 What is a “trance”?

(09:22) 4.4.1 Two properties related to “trance”: a 2×2 square

(10:46) 4.4.1.1 Property 1 but not Property 2: Flow states

(11:16) 4.4.1.2 Property 2 but not Property 1: “Lucid trance” and related

(13:43) 4.4.1.3 Both Property 1 and Property 2: Deep trance, sometimes involving amnesia

(14:13) 4.4.2 What does “irreconcilably different” mean in Property 2?

(16:18) 4.5 Explaining various tricks that help start and maintain trance

(16:24) 4.5.1 Trick 1: Hold in mind beliefs that are incompatible with your mental model of the homunculus

(20:42) 4.5.2 Trick 2: Avoid any action A that would normally be conceptualized as being caused by the homunculus

(23:49) 4.5.3 Trick 3: Seek out perceptual illusions where the most salient intuitive explanation of what's happening is that a different agent is the direct cause of motor or attentional actions

(26:30) 4.5.4 Trick 4: Find a “possessor” who you see as high status (a leader that you want to follow)

(31:15) 4.5.4.1 Trick 4A: Indirect version—the high-status person is not the actual “possessor”

(35:35) 4.6 Explaining properties of trance

(35:47) 4.6.1 Trance Property 1 causes “losing track of time”

(39:21) 4.6.2 “Deep” trance with both properties 1 and 2 can be associated with amnesia

(42:08) 4.6.3 Possessions are often child-like

(42:13) 4.6.3.1 Learning to talk from scratch

(44:17) 4.6.3.2 Other examples beyond speech

(46:27) 4.7 Conclusion

The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.

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First published:

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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