deception and confabulation...

malf

Member
In Alex's recent discussions with David Jacobs the subject of deception and confabulation comes up and Jacobs hints at some techniques that he uses to minimize the problem.

Alex asserts that this is not an issue in regards to NDEs, and that is a major difference between the two experience phenomena. Is there data to support this? Is anyone actively looking for deception and confabulation within NDEs? and (perhaps more importantly) what techniques could we possibly use to detect deception and confabulation in NDEs and OBEs?
 
Here's how wikipedia explains it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation

Reminds me of the definition of "hallucination". Basically all subjective experiences are hallucinations :) I hear techno music and cringe, someone else might be listening to the same piece and enjoy it very much. Who's hallucinating?

So, anyone reporting an experience that didn't have witnesses could very well be "confabulating". The interesting part about NDEs is that they're similar to other subjective experiences where we can find recurrent main features reported over and over again, providing the core elements of what is like to have an NDE. Similar to what is like to have a boat trip, running a marathon, or watching an horror movie.

ETA: I don't understand your point about OBEs. In general they don't have much in common with NDEs. They can be obtained without a life threatening event, and people is definitely conscious during the experience. We may argue about the "type of consciousness" of those occurrences but then what about dreams? They can be as vivid as waking consciousness.
 
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That it comes from mainstream psychology renders the notion silly IMO. It's a materialist field that - for instance - till the mid-20th century considered homosexuality a disease.
So how do we define "confabulation"? Is it a real thing?
 
That it comes from mainstream psychology renders the notion silly IMO. It's a materialist field that - for instance - till the mid-20th century considered homosexuality a disease.

You don't think confabulation exists?
 
In Alex's recent discussions with David Jacobs the subject of deception and confabulation comes up and Jacobs hints at some techniques that he uses to minimize the problem.

Alex asserts that this is not an issue in regards to NDEs, and that is a major difference between the two experience phenomena. Is there data to support this? Is anyone actively looking for deception and confabulation within NDEs? and (perhaps more importantly) what techniques could we possibly use to detect deception and confabulation in NDEs and OBEs?
Good question. We had this discussion a bit on the old forum and it was smacked down. :)

Usually, one would compare the stories in the absence of deception and confabulation. This means documenting someone's story while everyone is still blinded. The closest we come to this are the prospective controlled trials, especially Sartori's where she has published the transcripts of the interviews. They aren't ideal, as she isn't blinded (as to what happened to the patient) in a number of the cases. But they offer a good start as to where the information is coming from and how veridical it gets.

Linda
 
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Thanks. Indeed Elizabeth Loftus has written extensively on the subject. I don't see however the parallel with NDEs, where there's no psychotherapist working with the patient to implant false memories. To say that all stuff that doesn't sound "right" must therefore inevitably fall in the "false memory" category is a pretty lazy approach and pseudo skeptics resort to this cheap trick all the times.

But again, to respond to the OP, I have no idea where consistent support for such idea (confabulation in NDE) can be found.
 

I don't make anything of it. It's obvious that it is a parameter that is part and parcel of the status-quo view so of course there will be "experts" who have what they see as examples of it. Let's take a simple hypothetical example.

On Monday, Mary drives through a small town and stops at a lamp store, she goes in, looks around, makes a note to buy a specific lamp. On Friday she returns and can't find the store. Everyone she asks informs her there was never such a store in the location she claims. She leaves, slightly upset. On returning home she searches online and finds that town records so no such store.

By any status-quo (materialist) measure, Mary had a break of some kind or she was confused about the location, etc. The status-quo holds to the concept of a physically absolute, singular reality. So of course there viewpoints derive from - and fit - within that belief
 
Thanks. Indeed Elizabeth Loftus has written extensively on the subject. I don't see however the parallel with NDEs, where there's no psychotherapist working with the patient to implant false memories.

You gotta be kidding, right? The implanting of false memories doesn't have to be intentional, and it doesn't have to be done by a licensed psychotherapist. It just happens when humans tell stories - that's what she's writing about. And that fits perfectly with NDE accounts.
 
Which questions specifically do you think that the NDE researchers asked the patients in order to induce these memories?
 
I don't think you have to be asked a question to alter, create, or embellish a memory.
 
The trouble with these ideas of deception and confabulation is that they apply just as much at the time of reading or interpreting a report, as to the original content which went into the report. There is ample evidence of self-deception applied on a routine basis as part of at least some sceptical argument. I don't mean that in relation to anyone on this forum, but certainly in the wider community it is a major problem.

In other words the issues arise not only at the source but also at the destination.
 
The trouble with these ideas of deception and confabulation is that they apply just as much at the time of reading or interpreting a report, as to the original content which went into the report. There is ample evidence of self-deception applied on a routine basis as part of at least some sceptical argument. I don't mean that in relation to anyone on this forum, but certainly in the wider community it is a major problem.

In other words the issues arise not only at the source but also at the destination.

Absolutely.
Also, "the destination" is never final.
 
You gotta be kidding, right? The implanting of false memories doesn't have to be intentional, and it doesn't have to be done by a licensed psychotherapist. It just happens when humans tell stories - that's what she's writing about. And that fits perfectly with NDE accounts.
You should really expand on this if you wish to provide some substance to your thesis otherwise nobody will understand what's the direction of your point.

If I tell you that last night I have dreamt of meeting a beautiful blonde lady with long hair and piercing blue eyes will you believe me, or will you appeal to "false memories".
Similarly if I told you that the other day, while walking, I met the aforementioned beautiful lady is that again a likely product of confabulation?

Personally I wouldn't even know where to start from. Memories can greatly vary in strength and attached emotional content . There are very strong, powerful events that can leave equally strong memories and related feelings for decades. NDEs definitely fall in this category. I believe it is Bruce Greyson who has studied this aspect extensively and noticed how NDE patients didn't fail to report the same minute details that were reported in their first reports decades earlier.

Maybe you are already familiar with this:
http://iands.org/news/news/front-pa...-nde-memories-are-not-of-imagined-events.html

If not, it's worth taking a look.

Cheers

ETA = p.s. I don't doubt the false memories might slip in some NDE reports, but if false memories where the basis of NDEs it would be damn hard to explain why the phenomenon is so consistent in its main features.
 
I've got fatigue and am frustrated to read English sentences here, I know people have expressed their meanings well but just quite a bit difficult for me a non-English-tongue to comprehend, my bad of course ;)

One thing about false-memories or deception, which confuses me, is that speaking to me, I never had any false-memories (but had obscure memories which I clearly knew they were obscure and shouldn't be relied on), and I seldom took interested in confabulating loads of unreal tosh or balderdash just to fool the others.

For example, if I am asked my memories about a past event which involved me, I would describe something which I don't clearly remember as "I don't clearly remember", I would describe something which I clearly remember as "I clearly remember that thing" followed by almost meticulously detailful narrating about that thing, and later all can be proven correct.

I know precisely whether my memories about a certain event are clear or obscure, are "absolutely real" or "possibly wrongly", are dream-like or practically real, if I feel clear, then the fact always is that my memories are actually clear and conform to the truth, in this kind of situation I always report correctly about the facts of that event, on the other hand, if I feel my memories are at least a bit obscure, I would say: "If I don't remember wrongly, that thing would have been such such, but I might remember wrongly so it could also have happened in the either way."

Take an example, one day I went to work, and when I was working in the company my daddy phoned me and asked whether I had shut every lamp in our house, I did check the whole house before I left but since I got up late that day morning and was in a hurry I didn't check very very focusingly so I would had answered: "Sorry daddy probably all shut but I didn't remember very clearly".
And the next morning I got up early, and after had gotten ready to leave for work, I checked every lamp in our house, in an order of from "the farthest to the door" to "the nearest to the door", my parents' bedroom: three lamps, shut; kitchen: one lamp, shut; washing room: two lamps, shut; my bedroom: two lamps, shut, parlor: one lamp, shut, etcetera, so later if my daddy would ask the same question, I would clearly know my memories are NOT obscure and simultaneously NOT incorrect.

Maybe it is not as crystally strict as I claimed above, maybe they need to be quantified and don't reach 100%, but to say someone asserts that he clearly knows his experiences are real, but at the same time he actually really doesn't quite sure about their reality, and he can't verify or prove even merely to just himself that those experiences are real, this psychology is unimaginable to me, just like religionists saying they clearly know their gods are true gods, is also contradict to me. Maybe because I'm very practical a man and someone else may not be that practical, which I couldn't vicariously imagine but I could try to fathom.

As to ndes and many relevant claims, whether they are veridical to the nders themselves, veridical to the truth behind the phenomena, veridical to the others, or deception to the others, or self-deception to nders themselves, or deception to the truth behind the phenomena, or a combination of some of these, all can't be concluded currently.
 
enzymewrath said:
For example, if I am asked my memories about a past event which involved me, I would describe something which I don't clearly remember as "I don't clearly remember", I would describe something which I clearly remember as "I clearly remember that thing" followed by almost meticulously detailful narrating about that thing, and later all can be proven correct.
Good point.
We obviously need to discriminate and go deeper in the problem of "fallible memory". Just stating that human memories is flawed without distinctions, is clearly a misrepresentation.
 
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