Hallucinations

What Hacker News says

1. colechristensenOct 2025
   There are several levels of this. There are people who can do things as though they see but have no conscious access to the interpreted visual information. Or they can do something that requires vision with one hand but not the other.

   You can think of it like a bunch of different subsystems responsible for different kinds of tasks and some of them can be broken so the connections between them don't work.

   Read Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks for a lot of case studies.

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2. bemmuDec 2024
   There are fascinating descriptions of patient hallucinations after loss of vision in the aptly named book "Hallucinations" by Oliver Sacks.

   Tons of examples, but one that many musicians with partially lost vision experienced those missing parts of their vision randomly replaced by sheet music. Stare at sheet music your whole life, and your brain starts to predict sheet music anywhere. But when they tried to play the music, it didn't make sense.

   For those with complete loss of vision, the hallucinations became immersive, featuring complete scenes with people and events.

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3. ttctciyfNov 2024
   > The contrast in Sacks's hobbies

   Though you wouldn't know if from TFA, Sacks was also a life-long enthusiast of mind-altering substances[0]. His 2012 Hallucinations[1] inquires into the etiology and social and phenomenal aspects of its subject by examining cases from his patients and from his own recreational episodes and is a completely fascinating read!

   0: See, for example, https://www.npr.org/2020/09/21/915224016/neurologist-oliver-...

   1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinations_(book)

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4. PartiallyTypedAug 2021
   People don't give proprioception enough credit until they end up losing it. Proprioception is the sense of where in the world our bodies are.

   I hold the belief that proprioception is more than a sense, but rather, part of what makes us conscious as it requires a sense of 'I'. Toddlers are able to identify themselves in mirrors, and it is usually preceded by movements, and identifying that "the mirrored human performs the same movements as I do", which requires some form of proprioception.

   Oliver Sacks talks a lot about other senses beyond those covered in school. I can recommend "The man who mistook his wife for a hat", "Hallucinations", and "Awakenings".

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5. PhemistJan 2021
   I would happily recommend you to read "Hallucinations" by Oliver Sacks. This book is not about UFO sightings, but about how ordinary people can have wild hallucinations. For example, an elderly woman who would regularly have very vivid, daytime, hallucinations of a concert being played in her living room. She knew it was not "real", but it was comforting and a welcoming distraction from the isolation that elderly folk often suffer from. It is quite an eye-opening book.
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6. acjDec 2015
   "Chasing the Scream" - a timely and interesting summary of the war on drugs and its (in)effectiveness.

   "Mr. Bloomfield's Orchard" - a fun book about fungi from a mycologist with a solid sense of humor.

   "On the Move" - Oliver Sacks's biography. Insightful and uplifting, especially if you enjoy writing.

   "Ready Player One" - a dystopian cyber thriller. Reminded me of Snow Crash. Good stuff.

   "The Last Place on Earth" - a good (if labored) summary of the races to the north and south poles and their geopolitical impacts.

   "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" - been on my list for years. Long but good.

   "Steve Jobs" - needs no introduction. Got me interested in Isaacson's other books.

   "Hallucinations" (Oliver Sacks) - insightful analysis of the prevalence and for-reaching effects of hallucination. It's a lot more common (and puzzling) than most of us realize.

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