XPost: alt.folklore.ghost-stories, alt.out-of-body, sci.skeptic   
   XPost: bionet.neuroscience   
   From: david@edenroad.demon.co.uk   
      
   On Tue, 09 Jan 2007 17:47:13 -0800, h elmer | espeance wrote:   
      
   >   
   >   
   > David Mitchell wrote:   
   >> On Mon, 08 Jan 2007 10:51:22 -0800, neo wrote:   
   >>   
   >> True, but there are at least two things which seem to support the   
   >> "hallucination":   
   >> 1) Other people would probably notice,  Humans tend to share beds, and   
   >> rarely fall asleep simultaneously.  Certainly I think I would have noticed   
   >> invisible people whispering into the ear of someone who is asleep with her   
   >> head on my shoulders.   
   >>   
   > other people would notice what?   
      
   The quiet whispers coming from their sleeping partners' ears.   
   Think about it, there are about 2 billion people sharing a bed each night.   
   Do you not think that in all of human history, with its trillions of   
   shared nights, that it would have been noticed enough to be well known?   
      
   >> 3) Occams Razor tends to support the hypnogogic hallucination hypothesis   
   >> over that of whispering invisible entities.   
   >>   
   > as specualtive as any other proposal   
      
   It's not, really, as we already know both that the brain is capable of   
   creating sustained sensory information without sensory input (during   
   dreams, for example), and that you're at least halfway to the state in   
   which this happens (sleep).   
      
   Now, given that, which is more likely: the dreaming mechanisms   
   occasionally fire out of sequence, or there is a class of invisible   
   entities which waits around sleepers and whispers in their ears?   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)