Monday 12 December 2011

Paradox - Dec 2011

“This situation looks familiar.” “I have been here before.” “I have experienced this.” These thoughts are sometimes raised in people’s minds. Occasionally when you encounter a situation, you will suddenly think that you have experienced that before. A French psychic researcher, Émile Boirac named this phenomenon as “Déjà vu”.

“A black cat went pass this, and then another look just like it”

Déjà vu is described as a glitch of the system in the film Matrix; while in the real world, it is defined as an anomaly of memory. In most of the déjà vu cases, people recalled their previous experiences from their dreams. When people are in the process of experiences recollection, they have a strong feeling of having experienced, however the recollection of when and where they had those experiences is weak or even none (in fact they did not have such experiences in reality). Hence, people who encounterd déjà vu tend to give themselves an excuse that their particular experiences are experienced from dreams.

There are some other explanations for déjà vu too. For example, the overlapping between the neurological systems of short-term memory and long-term memory, and the time lag between the left eye and right eye in receiving vision, but both of the above explanations are not yet verified.

As we cannot find out the formation of déjà vu, there are some assumptions that humans have the ability to link up with different spaces. If people really have this ability, everybody can make prophecy for their own life. Based on this, we can control our own fortune. This will bring us more and more paradoxical questions.

Anthony Chan
       
References

Émile Boirac, (1876). Review Philosophique, 1, 430-431
Berrios, G.E. (1995). Déjà vu and other disorders of memory during the nineteenth century. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 36, 123–129.
Eli Marcovitz, M.D. (1952). The Meaning of Déjà Vu. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 21, 481-489

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