Deja Vu is just an error with how we save memories.
It skips working memory, short term memory, and goes straight into long term memory so everything we experience feels like we’re remembering it, but no matter how hard you try you can’t remember the future.
During certain recreational activities, it can last long enough to realize what’s happening. Normally you just get a brief moment of it till shit gets straightened out.
I’m a teenager and I’m sitting around the table with my buddies, and somebody says something that makes me think “woah, deja vu” and I remember that after that phrase was said, Tony would stand up and get some water. There was a brief moment where I knew what was about to happen, and sure enough, Tony stood up and got some water. That was as far as it lasted and it never happened since, but it blew my mind at the time. Still does honestly.
When I was younger I used to have these dreams from time to time where some mundane unimportant things were happening. Like walking through the parking lot of my school with classmates to go to gym class.
And then it would happen just as in the dream. They would happen some days, weeks sometimes years after these dreams. And I would remember the dream in that moment and think ‘deja vu’.
And I would remember the dream in that moment and think ‘deja vu’
That’s just Deja Vu. A common interpretation of it is that you dreamt it, because how else had you already seen it happen before? Your brain rationalizes it by telling you that you had dreamt it.
But that’s almost certainly not what happened. It’s the brain making a mistake recognizing a memory as it’s being stored. These types of mistakes get rarer and rarer as the brain learns to not fall for this, which is why Deja Vu becomes less common as we age.
(As I said in another post, I am not a doctor or a psychologist, this is just based on my experience and what I’ve read. But the idea that you’re remembering a dream you had and it played out the same way as what’s happening is a really common interpretation of Deja Vu. Our brains are really really good at rationalizing and inventing memories. And our memories are very flawed. So, Occam’s Razor, it is far more likely that your brain came up with a reason for what you were experiencing rather than that you predicted the future in your dream.)
That’s exactly what Deja Vu is. You’re convinced you know what is going to happen because you’ve seen it before. And when it happens you’re think, “I knew that was going to happen, it happened exactly as I had seen it!” So you remember it that way.
But in the moment you wouldn’t have actually been able to say what was about to happen. Your brain confirms that you did know what was going to happen when it does, because it’s essentially “reading” the memory as it “writes” it.
It helps that our conscious experience of the world is lagged a few milliseconds behind our instinctual reactions. So you actually did see it before you processed it happening, just by fractions of a second.
(NB: I am not a doctor or a psychologist or anything, this is just based on my experience and on what I’ve read. Human memory is very very flawed and we’re prone to remembering things differently than they happened, and be extremely confident about that misremembering. Especially the more times we go over that memory, rewriting it every time.)
I was in class in high school. I had the most intense de ja vu I’d ever had and have ever had since. I said to myself, under my breath, that kid over there is going to ask a very specific question. I then said under my breath the question. About 10 seconds later, the exact kid asks the exact word for word question I had just mumbled to myself. I still to this day don’t know what to make of it and it creeps me out.
After that I had a couple other times where I got mostly right what happened during the de ja vu, but nothing so precise and exact as that one.
Once I was sitting in my friend’s dorm room and I was so sure her (landline) phone was about to ring that I said out loud “Your phone is about to ring.” And it did. There were two witnesses and they were like how did you do that? After the call. To this day I have no idea why I was so certain that I spoke.
Deja Vu is just an error with how we save memories.
It skips working memory, short term memory, and goes straight into long term memory so everything we experience feels like we’re remembering it, but no matter how hard you try you can’t remember the future.
During certain recreational activities, it can last long enough to realize what’s happening. Normally you just get a brief moment of it till shit gets straightened out.
Alright, so here’s my craziest deja vu moment.
I’m a teenager and I’m sitting around the table with my buddies, and somebody says something that makes me think “woah, deja vu” and I remember that after that phrase was said, Tony would stand up and get some water. There was a brief moment where I knew what was about to happen, and sure enough, Tony stood up and got some water. That was as far as it lasted and it never happened since, but it blew my mind at the time. Still does honestly.
When I was younger I used to have these dreams from time to time where some mundane unimportant things were happening. Like walking through the parking lot of my school with classmates to go to gym class. And then it would happen just as in the dream. They would happen some days, weeks sometimes years after these dreams. And I would remember the dream in that moment and think ‘deja vu’.
That’s just Deja Vu. A common interpretation of it is that you dreamt it, because how else had you already seen it happen before? Your brain rationalizes it by telling you that you had dreamt it.
But that’s almost certainly not what happened. It’s the brain making a mistake recognizing a memory as it’s being stored. These types of mistakes get rarer and rarer as the brain learns to not fall for this, which is why Deja Vu becomes less common as we age.
(As I said in another post, I am not a doctor or a psychologist, this is just based on my experience and what I’ve read. But the idea that you’re remembering a dream you had and it played out the same way as what’s happening is a really common interpretation of Deja Vu. Our brains are really really good at rationalizing and inventing memories. And our memories are very flawed. So, Occam’s Razor, it is far more likely that your brain came up with a reason for what you were experiencing rather than that you predicted the future in your dream.)
That’s exactly what Deja Vu is. You’re convinced you know what is going to happen because you’ve seen it before. And when it happens you’re think, “I knew that was going to happen, it happened exactly as I had seen it!” So you remember it that way.
But in the moment you wouldn’t have actually been able to say what was about to happen. Your brain confirms that you did know what was going to happen when it does, because it’s essentially “reading” the memory as it “writes” it.
It helps that our conscious experience of the world is lagged a few milliseconds behind our instinctual reactions. So you actually did see it before you processed it happening, just by fractions of a second.
(NB: I am not a doctor or a psychologist or anything, this is just based on my experience and on what I’ve read. Human memory is very very flawed and we’re prone to remembering things differently than they happened, and be extremely confident about that misremembering. Especially the more times we go over that memory, rewriting it every time.)
I was in class in high school. I had the most intense de ja vu I’d ever had and have ever had since. I said to myself, under my breath, that kid over there is going to ask a very specific question. I then said under my breath the question. About 10 seconds later, the exact kid asks the exact word for word question I had just mumbled to myself. I still to this day don’t know what to make of it and it creeps me out.
After that I had a couple other times where I got mostly right what happened during the de ja vu, but nothing so precise and exact as that one.
Once I was sitting in my friend’s dorm room and I was so sure her (landline) phone was about to ring that I said out loud “Your phone is about to ring.” And it did. There were two witnesses and they were like how did you do that? After the call. To this day I have no idea why I was so certain that I spoke.