Errrr…If you want to be scientific about it then that is exactly how to approach it. i.e. assume that it could be all in your head and design your testing accordingly. You don’t try and prove yourself right, you do all you can to prove yourself wrong.
We humans imagine stuff that ain’t so all the time, we are terrible when it comes to fooling ourselves and the scientific method, double blind testing and honest peer review are the ways we guard against it.
I don’t think anyone doubts that you are experiencing something, but it is entirely possible that what you perceive is not based on any detectable source.
My claim is not that you’re mistaken, but that until there’s a blind experiment on this phenomenon, we have no idea if it’s a real external thing or an unconscious assumption that you and others have made.
I’m a government lawyer, and I once had occasion to visit a Navy lawyer’s office at Fallon Naval Air Station, the current Top Gun school. She had a whole drawer of her file cabinet marked, “Sonic Boom Claims.”
I know what a double-blind experiment is, and understand its importance. I know what the scientific method is, and endeavor always to apply it to any serious search for an answer. As I understand it, you make observations, form a hypothesis, design an experiment, gather data, and correlate for your conclusions. You aren’t supposed to set out to prove or disprove anything exactly; you are testing a hypothesis through an experiment designed to gather data in support of your hypothesis. This is actually the hardest part – figuring out what data points are unambiguous and relevant enough to be really useful.
The test that Wendell Wagner proposed had no clear hypothesis; and would be incapable of proving anything for several reasons.
One, that it would be impossible to take me blindfolded to a building and have me not be aware that it either is or is not my house. (Again, the hum is heard only indoors)
Two, that the phenomenon is presumably confined to a geographic region of unknown size, so there’s no way to know what boundaries separate one variable from another.
Three, that there are too many variable to count simply hearing it or not in a given area as a legitimate data point. The hum is sporadic. Even if I left in a car, blindfolded, during the time I was hearing the hum, were driven someplace else, and did not then hear it, there is no way to know whether we had simply left the affected area, or the sound had simply stopped.
It is also my understanding that it is not best practice to try to prove a negative; i.e., “brujaja is not hearing any real thing in her environment, so let’s try to prove it’s tinnitus or…” uh, or whatever else others may think a more likely explanation? Even if you proved tinnitus (which I don’t have) that doesn’t prove that the hum IS the tinnitus, do you see what I mean?
What I’m trying to say is that it is difficult to prove that a subjective experience is based on an imaginary source. Even if one did prove such a thing, you haven’t really gotten anywhere. Far better to postulate that the hum is real, and then try to gather data that might support that premise – or not.
What I’d really like is to figure out whether it is possible, for instance, to detect ground-based vibrations with any kind of equipment I have around the house. Or whether anyone involved with the transmission of ELF communications reports a similar sensation. Or if there is recent underground construction in this area.
Novelty Bobble: For the sake of argument, let’s say that it is all in my head – what then? It is not tinnitus, so it would have to be, uh, imaginary, I guess. I would be imagining that I heard a sound. Since my subjective experience is that I am hearing a remarkably intrusive vibration/sound, admitting that it is imaginary would do me no good whatsoever. (Leaving aside, of course, the whole issue of why a person would imagine --a voluntary act-- a maddening and persistent unpleasant sensation.) All roads to understanding this astoundingly real(istic) sensation and/or making it stop are now closed to me, because it is imaginary, and there’s nothing I can do.
Well, and excuse my language, f**k that. The only rational course of action is to investigate as best I am able whether there might be a real-world component to this sensation, one that can be detected and measured. At worst, I will find none, and will be in the same place I would be if I did nothing. At best, I will find that this is traceable to an actual source and can then take steps to block my vulnerability to it. At the very least, I will have eliminated (or not) the possibility of an outside source.
The only way to test whether something is “all in my head” is to test whether there might be an external source. In order to form a hypothesis, you have to posit that a given effect might be attributable to one or more factors. If that in and of itself constitutes confirmation bias, then there’s a whole lot of flawed studies out there.
Like, for instance, there was a study involving a group of especially long-lived people in Eastern Europe somewhere. Researchers “decided” that it might be something in their diets that produced this effect; and sure enough, they found it was due to a high intake of apricots.
Lots of things contribute to longevity. It could have been exercise, genetic factors, smoking, etc. Yet the researchers went looking specifically for a dietary factor. Was this “confirmation bias?”
I’ve read that the brain interprets sounds that are not recognized into the most near known sound. Lately I have interpreted some low level noise as very soft piano jazz. There is a switch yard nearby, and I enjoy listening to trains late at night. Some unknown sound early this morning sounded like a train through the rain, but there were no horn soundings to warn folks sleeping on the rails at the crossing, so it may have been something else.
it isn’t about what is comforting or does you “good” it is about what is true. And you are leaping to conclusions there. I don’t say that you need to admit it is imaginary, just to make sure that possibility is accounted for in your experimentation.
I don’t understand that thinking. surely if it does turn out to be imaginary then being open to that gives a pathway to stopping it as well.
. That’s fine. As long you remain open to the possibility that a fruitless search for an external source may be indicative that the source is internal. If you set out with the assumption that it must be external and it is not possible for you to be imagining it then that is a problematic mindset.
At that point would you switch to exploring internal sources? If so I see no problem with your approach.
I’d go where the evidence takes me and remain to open to the possibility of an internal or external source.