I have an anecdote that corroborates your observation that cognitive experiences are more complicated then assumed: I was once very, very sleep deprived. I became aware that my body was reacting to something, as if there was a jump scare in a movie, I unconsciously flinched and pulled away from something without knowing why, and then a perceptual moment later, I heard a loud noise caused by something falling to the floor.
It sounds like nonsense, of course, but that's because we naively assume that sleep and wakefulness are opposites--that they are mutually exclusive. What if we're wrong about that? What if instead each of them is a set of processes that normally work together, but that can be disrupted, and what if disrupting them makes the boundary between them more porous?
I have CFS, which boils down to having something screwed up in my recovery from fatigue. Nowadays it's not a big deal, as long as I follow some rules, but it took the better part of a decade to reach that point. For several years I used prescription modafinil and armodafinil to control when I was awake (because otherwise I slept eighteen to twenty hours a day).
With the modafinil I managed to reach a stable state where I could usually be awake for a fairly normal part of the day, but a couple of times a month I'd get so tired that I'd fall asleep even with a full dose of the stimulant in me.
Those naps were weird, though, in that I remained conscious through them. I mean I'd lie down, relax like normal falling asleep, and start breathing in that distinctive arrythmic way that tells you someone's asleep. I would just be awake the whole time, watching myself sleep. I experimented with trying to move when I was "asleep". Sometimes I could; sometimes I couldn't.
You can imagine that I really was asleep, and maybe the stimulant just caused me to dream that I was awake, watching myself sleep. The main problem I have with that explanation is that I have never in any other circumstance experienced dreams that were so much the same over and over, and without the usual fantastic elements.
Of course, you could argue that was the modafinil affecting my dreams, and that could be true.
But my hypothesis is similar to the migraine and scotoma blindsight thing: what if awake and asleep are not opposites, after all? What if they aren't actually mutually exclusive? What if, instead, they're just two complexes of cognitive and physiological states that don't normally happen at the same time because they interfere with each other? It's not useful for them to happen together, so our bodies and brains don't normally do that. But mix a strong CNS stimulant with extreme fatigue, and things get messed up.
If it was actually happening, and not some weird drug-induced dream or hallucination, then it strikes me as another case where our cognitive processes are a little more complicated and messy than we normally assume.
It never happened, as far as I can remember, before I developed CFS. It never happened when I was not taking modafinil or armodafinil.
To give you some idea of how profound my fatigue was, let's start with the fact that I've been extremely sensitive to stimulants of any kind since I can remember. A can of coke past 8PM would keep me awake half the night. It's a trait that I apparently inherited from my mother and passed on to my daughter.
After I developed CFS, I could take a full dose of an amphetamine and sleep like a baby. I know because amphetamines were one of the alternatives my physician tried for controlling my sleepiness and attention problems.
Modafinil and armodafinil are the drugs that worked for me. By the way, please don't anyone assume that they'll do the same thing for you that they did for me. Everybody's different. Talk to your doctor, not some random internet storyteller.
I've found sugar to be way worse for my insomnia than anything else. Caffeine does play a role but excess sugar really revs me up ironically.
Not anymore, though; not since I developed CFS.
I've achieved a good adaptation to it, and my life proceeds mostly as if I didn't have it now, as long as I observe some rules: regular schedule, good nutrition, regular low-impact exercise. (If my exercise gets too high-impact then I cross into the kind of fatigue I cannot easily recover from.)
I do follow science and medical news related to it. The present state of affairs as I currently understand it is that it's still a syndrome rather than a disease, which basically means it's a big bag of symptoms without an agreed-upon underlying cause or mechanism. There's some evidence that ties it somehow to the Epstein-Barr virus (and, perhaps coincidentally, one of my kids had mononucleosis in the months before I developed the syndrome). There's also some evidence that suggests that susceptibility to it is heritable. Some researchers have hypothesized that it's an epigenetic disorder--that is, a genetic disease that is activated by an environmental trigger (such as a viral infection--a large fraction of CFS cases start with a viral infection).
Someone published some work that claims that folks with CFS have distinctively abnormal calcium metabolism, which might account for the difficulty recovering from fatigue.
There are still some people who think it's psychosomatic, or mostly psychosomatic, too.
That's about as much as I remember off the top of my head. As I say, I'm interested, but not urgently so. I seem to have found my accommodation.
Both going to sleep and waking up I often notice this state; when going to sleep, I'll either stay that way long enough to actually get to sleep (usually only a few minutes I think, possibly 15-30 minutes at most on rare occasions) or unfortunately I often unintentionally wake myself up from that state (on those occasions it feels a bit like I have a fear of sleep). After I have slept for a while I am more commonly in that state for 15-30 minutes at a time and maybe sometimes longer, it is hard to remember (total time a day can be longer but I will fully wake up or sleep for a while in between). My memory for sleep related stuff is likely much better than most people due to the decades of insomnia, however it still isn't that good (nor is my memory in general after so much sleep trouble). I think my sense of time is fairly accurate in that state and it is often how I decide to consider it half sleeping or sleeping for my sleep log (I'll often look at a clock before it happens and if the next time I look at the clock it is a fair amount later than I expect then I was likely sleeping, although sometimes when near sleep I've looked at the clock and clearly seen a different time than it actually is so that might be the issue at times as well; the clock thing is not just lucid dreaming since it often happens when I'm standing up on the way to the bathroom). My understanding is the way sleep is defined it is possible at times to maintain awareness between being awake and in light non-REM sleep so I am also not 100% sure that "half sleeping" isn't technically sleep.
My understanding based partly on looking at some research (although I'm hazy in my memory at the moment so definitely look into any particular point if interested with the idea that I might be remembering incorrectly) is that there are a number of independent processes that are usually orchestrated fairly well into what we call sleep. There are a few parts of the brain that coordinate sleep and circadian rhythm, including a part of the hypothalamus. IIRC what we consider to be falling asleep may be closely connected to a state of the thalamus that is exclusive with being awake, but other parts of the brain can indepenently be more like being awake or more like the various non-REM sleep stages. This can happen the opposite way as well with "microsleep". When particularly sleep deprived I'll often involuntarily nod my head down a bit and microsleep in what feels like much of my brain while generally still aware of my surroundings. I think microsleeps may also cause the loss of working memory at times when sleep deprived and various other short term oddities. REM sleep is a different thing entirely with movement inhibition based in the brain stem and where the brain is otherwise mostly in its awake state. While dreaming is more common in REM sleep it is yet another independent mechanism that seems related to dopamine. The memory changes with sleep might be yet another usually connected but distinct mechanism. Sleep also isn't just neurally activated but there are a variety of endogenous sleep promoting and wake promoting substances. So definitely more complicated and messy than we usually think of it with a collection of sometimes mutually exclusive states none of which fully correspond with what we consider to be sleeping.
Of course, just because we both came up with similar hypotheses doesn't mean we're right, but I'll take it as a tentative working theory for now.
If you remember to try it, the results will be interesting no matter which way they turn out.
I normally just take a break from whatever I'm doing and go for a walk. The first time it ever happened to me was the first day of a literature class--that was an awkward event, explaining to my teacher that I couldn't read at the moment.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scintillating_scotoma.gif
It's a common misconception. What you're calling "ocular migraines" are more accurately referred to as "migraines with aura without headache", sometimes called "silent migraines". You can get actual ocular migraines as well, but those affect the eye (or optic nerve), and as such, are limited to the eye. Scintillating scotomas caused by migraine auras are visible with your eyes closed, and look the same in both eyes.
These links are closer to what mine look like:
If it's actually an ocular migraine (which takes place in the eye) rather than a scintillating scotoma (which takes place in the brain), that's a possible explanation for why I could continue reading. The UK's NHS says they tend to happen in just one eye, so if I was having an ocular migraine, it might have left my vision unobstructed in the other eye.
On the other hand, if that's the explanation, then I would sort of expect to have consciously experienced seeing the book while I was reading it, and I didn't--or if I did, that's not the way I remember it.
Of course, memory is untrustworthy, and it's also possible that the vividness of the ocular migraine might have persuaded my brain to tell me I couldn't see the book even though I could.
So ocular migraine is a solid alternative candidate to explain my experience. If I have another scotoma, I'll see if I can figure out a way to determine which thing is going on. Maybe closing one eye and then the other.
In general, when this occurs, I stop doing whatever I'm doing, take a ibuprofen pill and go to bed for 20 minutes. After that, I have a massive headache but no aura.
What was odd is that the very next day, I got the same migraine, again! This rarely occurs to me (two days in row).
It was later that I realized that the screen light was low and that might be an explanation about why I got two migraines in two days.
Hopefully it can help someone else here :)
Sometimes with accompanying headache, sometimes without. That picture is a great representation of what I see. Although I would say its usually more silvery and shiny. Dunno what triggers it, I've had it sitting watching TV, tryjng to work on computer (which becomes impossible) and just sitting in a restaurant eating lunch.
Normally lasts half an hour or so. Also sometimes I can be left feeling fuzzy and foggy for a day or so after.
Like you say reading just becomes impossible!
Have you found any good medication that helps when they trigger?
This sounds similar to the phenomenon of blindsight:
I’ve recently read “ A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence” by Jeff Hawkins and that is essentially what he argues. That our neo cortex had consists of millions of a similar structure and many of them fire up at the same time.
Fascinating book, would highly recommend.
> our cognitive experiences are more complicated than we tend to assume
I arrived at the same conclusion from different experiences. In my late teens and early 20s I worked for several years as a professional magician doing close-up slight of hand magic in nightclubs, restaurants, bars, parties, trade shows and corporate events. I performed for a lot of different types of people in different contexts and noticed how people would describe an effect they'd just seen me do to a friend who didn't see it. Their memory of something they'd just seen moments before was substantially different than what had actually happened.
This is unsurprising because my performance was carefully designed and rehearsed to create that misperception. What is surprising was the extreme detail and certainty of erroneous perceptions even from highly intelligent expert observers who were 100% focused on my every action with maximum effort. I found this super interesting and spent quite a bit of time exploring it with various experiments and pondering the implications which led me to the same realization you had about our conscious perceptions being less accurate and more variable than we internally experience them to be. In short, our memories can seem like a video recording to us but that's just a very convincing self-illusion.
In recent decades psychologists like Richard Wiseman have published research documenting this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3iPrBrGSJM
I did later learn another set of similar skills, though, and owned a business in that field for a while: martial arts.
Some martial arts are like stage magic in that they work in part by training yourself to do things that most people find surprising because they don't know how you do them or what training it requires to pull them off.
Not all martial arts use techniques like that, but some of them do, and some of the tricks of the trade make pretty good party tricks.
One example of a party trick that I've witnessed (and even learned to reproduce, poorly):
I know a guy who can take a dart in his hand, hold it with his arm fully extended, and, without bending his elbow, stick it in a dartboard from normal playing distance. It looks like magic: the dart flies across the room and sticks in the board.
If you have the relevant kind of training, then you know exactly how he's doing it (although, simply knowing it doesn't make it easy to reproduce!), but if you don't, then odds are you don't believe it's even possible.
There are very interesting differences between certain lesions in the left side of the brain, and in the right side. For instance there are some people that are blind, but do not believe that they are, and vice versa, which lines up with your experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41tIxqieC0c
I couldn't find any illness associated to the condition of not being able to hear yourself/the notes disappearing while playing, but what you are describing, losing yourself while reading as the world closes around the words in a kaleidoscope-style prism, sounds really similar.
It leads to a lot of out of body experiences and dissociation. As a weird side effect I also mostly only have lucid dreams now.
One thing I found odd is that there's entire groups of people who chase this kind of mental state. Usually through a state of psychedelic drugs to induce a state of altered mind. It's really odd to me because I hate the feeling myself, being forced into it. Though I suppose it's like anything, where if it's in small doses it's a fun novelty for some.
Anyway, my epilepsy has greatly affected my perception of my own perception abilities.
I've had the migraines mostly while sitting an the computer or reading, but it seemed impossible to me to continue to read since the zig zags were right above the letters, and frankly quite distracting. Because of that, I've never really tried to continue.
It seems weird to say that, but I'm almost looking forward to the next migraine solely to test if I can still read if I really try. That would be awesome! Thank you for your description!
My N is 1; I've never yet had the chance to test it a second time. I'm actually looking forward to my next scotoma for that reason!
> It was disappointed. I didn't want to stop reading. I was enjoying the book. So I decided to keep reading until the scotoma made it impossible to continue.
I do the same thing now. I had one come on recently when I was lifting weights. I just decided to power through it. It was perhaps the most intense aural disruption I've experienced but the typical after effects (which, in my case, tend to be very bad and render me useless for 2-4 hours following an "attack") were almost completely subdued. I recall that I felt like I had a slight hangover and was able to fully function after it passed.
Migraine auras suck, but are pretty fascinating. Depending on which part of the brain they affect, different symptoms can manifest. Visual auras à la scintillating scotoma are probably the most common, but slurred speech can happen as well, or reduced sensation in half the body, probably other things as well ..
And almost without exception, the visual auras are followed by immense headaches, so I personally would not say I like then very much :D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphene#Mechanical_stimulati...
Or is it quite different?
About 8 years ago, I had many migraines (a few per year but I would essentially be unable to do anything for a couple of hours). Many of those were the results of being in a noisy environment or high physical effort.
I knew whenever I was going to get a migraine because I got the auras (couldn't see in front of me, but if I remember correctly I still had my peripheral vision) and couldn't feel the very tip of my thumbs and my tongue (yes, apparently you can lose this, too). A few minutes after those feelings, sure enough I would get the migraine. When in that state, I have a big headache, can't see much, nausea.
Hopefully other people will relate!
For example, my wife and I worked overtime and through the weekends for three weeks before our anniversary, because we wanted everything done by then. We went to a resort for our anniversary, and sure enough, on the second day of relaxation I've had an episode.
Oh, I've had those - though not as lasting or opaque as they sound for you. I always thought it was one step prior to the "blinding" pain level I'll get from different nerve compression syndromes and injuries I have/had; for obvious reasons I try to manage my life to limit agitating the nerves and to not reach the blinding pain level - where for at least a few moments I can't see or don't experience anything but the pain; quite the short circuit mechanism to grab one's full attention.
Mine used to happen a bit when playing sport so I always associated them with dehydration, but it seems like that’s probably not it.
[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scintillating_zigzag...
After finishing my CompSci degree I was bored and did some first year psychology degree courses and that was also one of my main takeaways (I don’t mean it was an original take, just one of the main takeaways I remember from these courses).
See for example split brain individuals[0] where the connection between the two hemispheres is severed/damaged - up to a point this was a common surgery to treat epilepsy a decade ago.
Patients seemed fine on first glance, but ultimately there were interesting incongruences [1]. I’m probably doing injustice to the description of the experiment so please read the linked page, but essentially they created a situation where each eye saw a different image (e.g. one related to chickens and another to snow) and then asked to choose with different hands from a set of pictures the picture most related (e.g. an egg or a snowman). The right hand (connected to the right hemisphere and thus the left eye) chose one thing connected to what the left eye saw and the right hand chose another.
Let’s say the left eye saw snow and the right saw chickens. The most interesting part is when the patients were asked about their choices, since only the left hemisphere can talk (the speech center). So they explained why the left hand chose something correctly, but made up some unrelated explanation about their right hand choices (“eggs are white like snow”)! In other more horrific terms, the right hemisphere had some level of thinking/reasoning going on but could not speak since it now had no mouth.
So, in healthy individuals there’s definitely syncing between the two hemispheres and different centers going on, but as any complex system I’m sure there are hiccups.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain
[1] https://physics.weber.edu/carroll/honors/split_brain.htm
It touches upon the composite nature of sight and other senses and functions.
It's ultimate goal is putting forth a theory of how self naturally arises from the composite.
The first migraine I remember was in my mid teens. It was extremely painful, with searing pain through my head and down through my torso. It felt as if someone had stuck a red-hot blade right through my head and into my body and was just holding it there.
Up into my early thirties, migraines continued to be very painful. Like you I often experienced both pain and nausea. Besides the knife through my body and the nausea, I often also experienced any kind of sensory input as painful. Hearing sounds was painful; seeing light was painful; tasting or smelling anything was painful; touching things was painful. During an attack I would generally just try to find a soft, quiet, dark, warm place to lie down until it went away.
Beginning in my late thirties, the painful and unpleasant aspects of the migraines began to diminish. By my forties, the attacks had become much less frequent, and when they occurred, they were much less painful.
The scotoma remained prominent, though. In my teens, it was generally a circular area of blackness surrounded by a rapidly-whirling multicolored aurora. It gradually changed over the years, going through several different shapes and color patterns. Most recently it's usually been brilliant white geometric shapes with rapidly-moving zebra stripes, turning slowly.
The scotoma has always been much more vivid than real vision. The shapes and colors are much much brighter, clearer, and more vivid than any real image I've ever seen.
Over the past fifteen years or so, the frequency is down to once every two or three years, and it's commonly just the scotoma for a little while, and none of the other symptoms, or perhaps a little minor discomfort in my torso and a little dizziness. Sometimes it's just a set of sensations that are really hard to describe--sort of just a hint of the feeling of falling, or a very faint experience of dizziness, together with an impression that part of my visual field is sort of starting to flicker randomly. Usually that flickering turns into the scotoma, but in some recent cases, I just have the flickering for a few minutes, and then nothing else.
In the incident I describe here, it was just the scotoma for a little while. (Sorry I'm not more specific about how long it lasts. I'd guess maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, but my sense of time is kind of screwed up during an attack.)
If you're younger, maybe the trajectory of my migraine offers some hope. Mine have gotten much easier to take over the years. Maybe yours will, too.
I lost, temporarily, the connection between what I wanted to say and the words that would come out. It was crazy.
what’s really interesting is after having heart surgery, I would have like 10 a day for weeks. Others in post-cardiac surgery message boards reported the same experience. It went back to normal frequency months after surgery, but definitely an unsolved mystery!
A funny but related story: I was visiting Paray-le-Monial where there's a diorama about the visions of Saint Margaret-Mary ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mary_Alacoque ), who is at the origin of the current cult of the "Sacred heart of Jesus".
In fact from the descriptions, it's very clear that the brilliant, shimmering lights that she related as her visions and revelations of the "Sacred Heart" were simply scintillating scotoma from her migraine, then followed with terrible access of headaches that she interpreted as her mystical ordeal from God.
Not quadratic, and not regular in a geometric way, more like leaves, roughly the shape of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhombus
It starts as something like a fast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyout within about a second, two at most, and then I'm having this 'screensaver effect' for about 30 seconds to a minute, or so.
Most fields are just scrambled into random positions, sometimes even jumping into others, while about a few dozen are impossible blacks or grays with vertigo inducing feelings, because they seem to jump back and forth between infinity and back. Really hard to describe.
Anyways, this absolutely messes with my orientation, and I shiver or even shake slightly.
However, I do not fall. One time this happened to me while carrying a cup of coffee on a saucer from the coffee machine in a conference room back to my seat. The cup clattered on the saucer because of my shaking, but I managed to put it down on the next table with a loud clack, and drop myself into some spare chair next to the wall.
Without spilling a single drop!
Witnesses described my moves as something like an industrial robot on fast-forward. Not fluent, but in fast and small consecutive steps. But I couldn't see!
Havn't had one of those for years now, also no debilitating pains, those came first. Thing is, I mostly had these when I felt under (time)pressure, stressed, angry. (I think)
For instance, bicycling fast somewhere to be there as arranged? Happened several times, full brake!
Bicycling fast, really pushing it, but just for fun? Never happened. (So far)
Really, really strange!
Funny thing is, MRIs decades later show nothing. According to the radio- and neurologists there arent even traces of something bad, and my brain has exceptionally good blood circulation.
Oh, back to language! At the time this happened I had trouble speaking in several ways. First to find words, then to form/speak them. But only in German, which IS my native language.
Not so in English!
Also I didn't really notice it at first, because I tend to not 'think in words', but mostly visual in pictures, movies, abstract mashups of these.
I also had ataxia, but not one-sided as usual, but right arm, and left leg.
Really, really strange. But mostly gone now.
Except for losing temper fast.
That stayed.
Can't have a better defence against BS though! :-)
It's probably totally unrelated to any of this, but I also think primarily (though not entirely) nonverbally, and expressing myself always involves translating nonverbal thoughts into words.
And, for what it's worth, I'm a native English speaker trained (but horribly out of practice) in German (and Latin and Mandarin and Tibetan and Hungarian and Greek and Esperanto and Lojban --don't ask me to communicate in any of them without several weeks of remedial practice!).
Latin and Greek would be good too, of course. For the classics, or classical education I didn't have. Went totally technical early on.
"Fachidiot", so to speak ;-)
In my defense, I've had some decent fluency a couple of time in the past. I ran into a German couple in Athens once and we had a nice conversation. They said nice things about my German :-).
But now in all those languages except English I'm just a dabbler.
At least I know that I can acquire some fluency; I've been able at different points in the past to carry on basic conversations in German and Hungarian and Mandarin, and read some of the easier classical texts in Latin and Greek and Tibetan.
The idea of improving my skills in any of them (or all of them!) is appealing enough for me to occasionally work on them (especially on Latin and Greek), but my attention inevitably gets captured by my numerous other interests, and my language skills fade again.
Worse, there's a long list of other languages that I think are really interesting, and that I would no doubt acquire if only it were quick and easy enough. As it is, though, I mostly just read about languages because they're so interesting. Well, and construct them. Conlanging is a hobby, too.
Btw., the English lessons I had in school were rather boring and uninspiring. I didn't really learn it that way, that happened when I had to read Neuromancer by William Gibson, and didn't get it. So I bought a small to middle dictionary from Langenscheid and read it again with the dictionary at hand. Then it somehow clicked for me.
That worked for reading, hearing not so much. That came later by watching movies, news(BBC/CNN), listening to radio(BFBS), and having at least some fluency in speaking even later, because of work.
Nowadays I'm only caught slightly off guard when someone is unexpectedly speaking to me in English in daily life, like people asking for the way, to some location, or things like that. Sometimes I need one to two seconds until it registers what they said, or asked. Sometimes not at all, instantly.
Oh, and under stress my German is getting worse, I'm at a loss for words, have to really 'search' for them, while I could speak it in English without any problem.
So strange...
Should be "I had that interest when I was younger, but not anymore."
I thought you might like the correction; forgive me if I'm wrong. In my experience, differences in the idiomatic use of verb tenses is one of the more difficult things about learning languages.
If you hear a native English speaker say, "I've been younger," then what they're saying is, "I'm old."
Good night :-)
I have chronic migraine. It sounds worse than it is; I rarely suffer attacks anymore, and when I do, they're usually mostly harmless, as in the case I'll describe below.
Contrary to popular belief, migraine is not a headache. It's something a little more like an epileptic seizure. Intense headaches are one common symptom, but there are a lot of others.
One common symptom of migraine is called *scintillating scotoma*. A scotoma is a blind or blank spot in the visual field. A scintillating scotoma caused by migraine is an area of the visual field that is temporarily replaced by a vivid visual aura. Its appearance is commonly the first symptom of a migraine attack, and is often followed by more unpleasant symptoms.
I've seen scintillating scotoma many times over the years. A few years ago I was reading and enjoying a good book, and my scotoma appeared. It was a humdinger: roughly triangular prisms of white light with utterly black zebra stripes moving along them kaleidoscope-style. It took up the lower left middle of my visual field, pulsing and radiating and turning, covering the book in my hand.
I was disappointed. I didn't want to stop reading. I was enjoying the book. So I decided to keep reading until the scotoma made it impossible to continue.
It never did.
It became so vivid that I couldn't see my hand at all, but I still had no trouble reading the book. I even started reading it aloud without any difficulty.
After a few minutes the scotoma faded. In that instance, it was not followed by any other symptoms (that's happened more and more frequently over the years since probably my forties).
I could now see the book again, and could confirm that what I had been reading was indeed what was on the page.
I thought about how to explain my experience. The best hypothesis I've come up with so far is that the neurological process of seeing and the neurological process of being consciously aware of what I'm seeing are not the same thing. They're independent processes. The scotoma prevented me from subjectively experiencing seeing the book, but did not prevent me from actually seeing it, nor from correctly interpreting what I was seeing.
This experience (and one two other odd experiences) has led me to adopt the working hypothesis that many of our cognitive experiences are more complicated than we tend to assume, and that they're often made up of several more or less independent processes. We usually benefit if related processes pretty much work together, so they pretty much do. Because they do, we experience them all together as a single experience, but that's an illusion that unravels if circumstances screw up their synchronization.
I hope someone finds that as interesting as I do.