From church apologist to neuroscientist and physicist

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Ah, that was very generous of Mr. Peterson to explain how he affords to travel as a tour guide. He’s in the employ of the tour company. I suppose my off-the-cuff comment was more along the lines of all the traveling he does, not just as a tour guide for a tour company. I believe his references to all the various trips he takes around the world aren’t just in the employ of a tour company, no? Whatever the case may be, he seems awfully defensive of two short comments made by two anonymous cowards on a small niche discussion board, don’t you think? I’m not sure we’re the ones obsessed since I haven’t clicked on his vanity blog in quite some time, but he seems to follow this board religiously. Projection at its finest I suppose.

- Doc

[drumdude]

I think it was a nice way to dodge the larger question of why he hasn't been formally trained in all of these subjects that he speaks so authoritatively on that aren't linguistics.

You know, since he's so quick to throw shade at Brent Metcalfe and others for not having a phD...

[Physics Guy]

I suspect that part of the reason why the term "out of body experience" is used by psychologists who study them is that it's kind of neutral-sounding about whether anything besides the subjective experience is out of the body. I doubt that many of the psychologists think that anything does, but some of the people they're studying may feel strongly about what their experiences meant. So the psychologists probably try not to offend the subjects.

The Wikipedia article has more information, including an estimate which surprises me, that as many as one person in ten may have an OOBE at least once in their life. So I still have a chance, yay! I think it would be really cool, even though I will still be quite sure, even if I have one, that nothing actually leaves my body. If it ever does happen I hope I will have enough presence of mind to try to look closely at things that my eyes couldn't see.

If I do seem to see something like that, from "out of my body", I will still be pretty sure that it will only be a memory from having seen it before, at some time when my eyes could see it—even if I can't remember seeing it before. But I'm curious exactly what my brain would produce for such a sight. Will it be like what we all "see" in the optic nerve blind spot?

(That's the spot in everyone's visual field where there are no light-sensitive cells in the retina, so we can't actually see anything that's at that angle from our eyes. And indeed we don't see anything there; but we also don't notice any dark shadow there, either. Our brains just kind of say about that spot, "Nothing to see here, move along," and we mentally do. You can put an object on the desk, a bit to one side, and move back and forth while looking straight ahead with one eye closed, and if you can manage to pay attention to that spot without letting your eye move to look straight at it, you can notice it appear and disappear as you move. When it disappears, because your movement has brought it into your blind spot, you don't notice any black hole in the desk at that spot. Your impression is just that the desk is clear, with no object placed on it. Move a bit further and the object reappears. Somehow neither the disappearance nor the reappearance is startling. You have to make a point of trying to notice it. It's truly weird.)

(Another bizarre experiment is just to look at yourself in the mirror, and in particular look at your left eye. Then look at your right eye. Then your left, then your right, back and forth, back and forth. You'll never see your eyes move. Each time when you look, you'll see your eye staring steadily back at you, motionless. And yet if you get someone else to do this exactly the same way, and watch their eyes while they do it, you'll see that their eyes are moving most of the time, back and forth, back and forth. Our brains block out the motion of our own eyes, so that we see a series of still shots and not the constantly swinging pan that our retinas would record if they were video cameras. However it works, it's impressive. And once you know about this kind of stuff, it's a lot less surprising that our brains might occasionally show us the world from an exterior view. Our vision is highly post-processed.)

One group of people who seem to be really keen on OOBEs are Scientologists. Having an OOBE is a major goal; they call it "going exterior". A lot of Scientology processes are at least a bit like hypnotism, so it might be that dedicated practise of Scientology actually does somehow increase your chances of having an OOBE. It still doesn't seem to be common among Scientologists, and since Scientologists are a very small group, Scientology OOBEs are a tiny fraction of the recorded total.

[Philo Sofee]

Peterson worked at BYU, hence a paid apologist. It's that simple. He was not allowed to follow the evidence where it leads and come to real conclusions in his writings, only faithful answers. It's that simple. He can deny it all he wants, we know better. And he knows we know.

[huckelberry]

I have thought about and read some about how we construct our vision. (I have a mostly past involvement in visual arts) I think your observations about how people could construct out of body experiences makes sense.

I tried your two experiments and found them interestingly workable. I may have done the blind spot some time long enough ago I am not remembering. A nice yellow guitar pick sitting on a dark table top just up and disappears from view.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Peterson worked at BYU, hence a paid apologist. It's that simple. He was not allowed to follow the evidence where it leads and come to real conclusions in his writings, only faithful answers. It's that simple. He can deny it all he wants, we know better. And he knows we know.

Don’t forget his CV was primarily composed of apologetics, and he spent the vast majority of his time at the MI and online conducting and producing apologetics. He was receiving a paycheck by proxy from the cult through BYU. He can keep lying, and perhaps his small cabal of bootlickers believe him, with a wink and a nod of course, but he is what he is.

- Doc

[Res Ipsa]

I suspect that part of the reason why the term "out of body experience" is used by psychologists who study them is that it's kind of neutral-sounding about whether anything besides the subjective experience is out of the body. I doubt that many of the psychologists think that anything does, but some of the people they're studying may feel strongly about what their experiences meant. So the psychologists probably try not to offend the subjects.

The Wikipedia article has more information, including an estimate which surprises me, that as many as one person in ten may have an OOBE at least once in their life. So I still have a chance, yay! I think it would be really cool, even though I will still be quite sure, even if I have one, that nothing actually leaves my body. If it ever does happen I hope I will have enough presence of mind to try to look closely at things that my eyes couldn't see.

If I do seem to see something like that, from "out of my body", I will still be pretty sure that it will only be a memory from having seen it before, at some time when my eyes could see it—even if I can't remember seeing it before. But I'm curious exactly what my brain would produce for such a sight. Will it be like what we all "see" in the optic nerve blind spot?

(That's the spot in everyone's visual field where there are no light-sensitive cells in the retina, so we can't actually see anything that's at that angle from our eyes. And indeed we don't see anything there; but we also don't notice any dark shadow there, either. Our brains just kind of say about that spot, "Nothing to see here, move along," and we mentally do. You can put an object on the desk, a bit to one side, and move back and forth while looking straight ahead with one eye closed, and if you can manage to pay attention to that spot without letting your eye move to look straight at it, you can notice it appear and disappear as you move. When it disappears, because your movement has brought it into your blind spot, you don't notice any black hole in the desk at that spot. Your impression is just that the desk is clear, with no object placed on it. Move a bit further and the object reappears. Somehow neither the disappearance nor the reappearance is startling. You have to make a point of trying to notice it. It's truly weird.)

(Another bizarre experiment is just to look at yourself in the mirror, and in particular look at your left eye. Then look at your right eye. Then your left, then your right, back and forth, back and forth. You'll never see your eyes move. Each time when you look, you'll see your eye staring steadily back at you, motionless. And yet if you get someone else to do this exactly the same way, and watch their eyes while they do it, you'll see that their eyes are moving most of the time, back and forth, back and forth. Our brains block out the motion of our own eyes, so that we see a series of still shots and not the constantly swinging pan that our retinas would record if they were video cameras. However it works, it's impressive. And once you know about this kind of stuff, it's a lot less surprising that our brains might occasionally show us the world from an exterior view. Our vision is highly post-processed.)

One group of people who seem to be really keen on OOBEs are Scientologists. Having an OOBE is a major goal; they call it "going exterior". A lot of Scientology processes are at least a bit like hypnotism, so it might be that dedicated practise of Scientology actually does somehow increase your chances of having an OOBE. It still doesn't seem to be common among Scientologists, and since Scientologists are a very small group, Scientology OOBEs are a tiny fraction of the recorded total.

I share your interest in having one, just to experience it. I think your blind spot and eye movement examples are great illustrations of the extent to which the brain edits what we see. My other favorite is that what we see at any given point in time is the brain's prediction of what things will look like a fraction of a second into the future, to compensate for the time it takes to transmit and process the visual input. Otherwise, we couldn't do things like high speed races or fly fighter jets.

[Marcus]

Some who accompany tours are also paid a sum in addition to their expenses. I never have been. Perhaps I’m simply stupid.

… the company pays travel, lodging, and food expenses for me and my wife. (Actually, they never pay quite enough to fully cover all of our expenses, but what they cover gives us a pretty substantial discount for such trips.)

And in case he argues his wife works too

In order to persuade me to accompany their tour group

and

What are my duties?

and

What do I get for doing this?

[Res Ipsa]

Some who accompany tours are also paid a sum in addition to their expenses. I never have been. Perhaps I’m simply stupid.

… the company pays travel, lodging, and food expenses for me and my wife. (Actually, they never pay quite enough to fully cover all of our expenses, but what they cover gives us a pretty substantial discount for such trips.)

And in case he argues his wife works too

In order to persuade me to accompany their tour group

and

What are my duties?

and

What do I get for doing this?

i'm not getting your point. DCP says the company covers expenses such as food, travel and lodging, but that he isn't paid a sum in addition to that. That doesn't seem odd or inconsistent to me.

[Xenophon]

I've just got one sentence for those of you hoping for your own OBE: Psychedelics and proper intention setting.