I've once drank too much vodka and found myself totally unable to speak my native language (which I used everyday during those says and what everybody around was speaking) and only able to speak English (or French). That happened to be fairly inconvenient as the friend of mine that was drinking with me was particularly bad at foreign languages.
I woke up unable to speak English
81–90 of 105 posts
Re: I woke up unable to speak English
#82This article is entirely plausible to me. I have dealt with two relatives with brain tumors. Between disease and treatment, I have seen some incredibly weird stuff. It makes me realize how little we understand how minds work. The best analogy I have is to think of your smartphone from the perspective of a normal user. You're used to it working fine. But suddenly it stops working fine. So a technical friend hooks up a…
Someone I know had a father-in-law with brain cancer that destroyed his ability to speak -- but he could still sing. So, that's how he communicated up until the end.
Makes me think of that buffy episode where they all suddenly sing
Re: I woke up unable to speak English
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely agreed. Brains are bizarre. My mother-in-law once had what we (and her primary physician) believed was a serious flu. The moment we realized that it was much worse than that was when she started calmly speaking total nonsense. She appeared to think it was normal English, but each word was unintelligible, though it used plausible parts of speech. At that moment I picked her up and drove her to the E.R., aft…
Which reminds me, I should mention that for anybody with an elderly relative who experiences a sudden decline in the direction of delirium or dementia: make sure they don't have a urinary tract infection. I have no idea how that plumbing is connected, but I have seen it happen myself, and apparently it's a not-uncommon experience for people with Alzheimer's: https://www.alzheimers.net/2014-04-03/connection-between-ut…
Talking gibberish is also one of the first symptoms of stroke, but that's well-known.
Re: I woke up unable to speak English
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I lost not all but a good portion of my sense of smell, and it never came fully back. That was over twenty years ago.
A co-worker of mine got some kind of nasal surgery and got back some long lost part of his sense of smell. You mind consider looking into that. I have had a poor sence of smell my whole life, it seems, and have considered looking into why and how it might be fixed.
An ex girlfriend of mine had no sense of taste or smell from birth to her late teens, until she had some kind of sinus surgery. One of her most vivid memories from the first week post, was encountering the glorious olfactory celebration that is a skunk.
Re: I woke up unable to speak English
#85Not questioning the husband's devotion to his wife, but it seems a bit odd to me that he would take an 18 month sabbatical and focus on re-teaching her a language that keeps slipping out of her mind due to brain injury. You would think that teaching himself German would be the low-hanging fruit.
I am happy for him he was in a position where he could take an 18 month sabattical. I would be fucked.
Re: I woke up unable to speak English
#86This article is entirely plausible to me. I have dealt with two relatives with brain tumors. Between disease and treatment, I have seen some incredibly weird stuff. It makes me realize how little we understand how minds work. The best analogy I have is to think of your smartphone from the perspective of a normal user. You're used to it working fine. But suddenly it stops working fine. So a technical friend hooks up a…
Absolutely agreed. Brains are bizarre. My mother-in-law once had what we (and her primary physician) believed was a serious flu. The moment we realized that it was much worse than that was when she started calmly speaking total nonsense. She appeared to think it was normal English, but each word was unintelligible, though it used plausible parts of speech. At that moment I picked her up and drove her to the E.R., aft…
Doesn't even have to be that serious. My young son went off on a sleep walk once, came in speaking complete gibberish (like a random sort on a dictionary) but in a totally normal rhythm and cadence. After I regained composure and figured out what was going on, and redirected him he want back to bed, artfully working his way around the usual Lego detritus everywhere his path. So weird you can be basically unconscious but still so functional!
Re: I woke up unable to speak English
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> b) they aren't designed It does seem like a reasonable statement, but when you take a bit of time to think about it, billions of people disagree with it. A sobering thought. > so there's no expectation that they should make sense under the hood What doesn't make sense is that at first you deny a religious explanation, then without skipping a beat you ascribe (what can ironically be described as divine) mysteriousne…
actually, if you believe in natural evolution, brains are designed. just because there isn't any intelligence involved, doesn't mean that the brain isn't a meticulously crafted piece of perfection.
It's probably not, though. Evolution doesn't select for perfection, and many aspects of our evolutionary derived bodies are frankly bizarre.
Take the eye as an example. There's no need for us to have a blind spot. Octopus have eyes almost identical in design, but without a blind spot - convergent evolution meant that both species ended up developing very similar eyes but with one crucial difference: in humans, the retina is wired the wrong way round.
The retina is like a huge array of light detecting cells. In octopus, these cells are connected to the optic nerve on the back side. In humans, they connect on the front side. The blind spot in humans is because of the need for a hole in the retina for the optic nerve to pass through and split and connect to the retina proper.
Re: I woke up unable to speak English
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> b) they aren't designed It does seem like a reasonable statement, but when you take a bit of time to think about it, billions of people disagree with it. A sobering thought. > so there's no expectation that they should make sense under the hood What doesn't make sense is that at first you deny a religious explanation, then without skipping a beat you ascribe (what can ironically be described as divine) mysteriousne…
Oh, we're voting on the truth? That's how that works? Please. You're also wrong about the religious part. Plenty of people who believe in a god or gods believe that humans were created along with the rest of the universe, but many don't believe that they were designed in any useful sense of the word. You can talk to pretty much any scientist who's religious about that. E.g., a Christian astronomer may believe that hi…
> humans were created along with the rest of the universe, but many don't believe that they were designed in any useful sense of the word.
Genesis 1-27: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."
If you create an MMO and then host it somewhere where it can run in perpetuity and then you move on and never touch the servers again, can you in good faith make an argument that the game wasn't designed by programmers, artists, composers, etc?
So the players might have stumbled into a game (they were born) and believe that the game itself was created, but not designed?
The people you talk about might believe in "a" god, but certainly not the christian god. It doesn't make sense to say that you are a christian, but you believe in it à la carte.
Re: I woke up unable to speak English
#89This article is entirely plausible to me. I have dealt with two relatives with brain tumors. Between disease and treatment, I have seen some incredibly weird stuff. It makes me realize how little we understand how minds work. The best analogy I have is to think of your smartphone from the perspective of a normal user. You're used to it working fine. But suddenly it stops working fine. So a technical friend hooks up a…
If you are interested in the brain, there are good royal institute lectures on youtube.
The Neuroscience of Consciousness – with Anil Seth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRel1JKOEbI
The Neuroscience of Memory - Eleanor Maguire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdzmNwTLakg
Also, any book by oliver sacks is great if you'd rather read books rather than watch lectures.
Re: I woke up unable to speak English
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, we're voting on the truth? That's how that works? Please. You're also wrong about the religious part. Plenty of people who believe in a god or gods believe that humans were created along with the rest of the universe, but many don't believe that they were designed in any useful sense of the word. You can talk to pretty much any scientist who's religious about that. E.g., a Christian astronomer may believe that hi…
> humans were created along with the rest of the universe, but many don't believe that they were designed in any useful sense of the word. Genesis 1-27: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." If you create an MMO and then host it somewhere where it can run in perpetuity and then you move on and never touch the servers again, can you in good faith ma…
The say they are Christians. Some even teach science at Christian colleges. I'm not sure why you think you know science (and theology) better than them given that it's their life's work.
Also, your argument from that chunk of Genesis is weak. Created "in his own image" could mean quite a lot of things. Imagine that tomorrow humans get the ability to create new universes where they can speed up the flow of time. Pretty much the first thing we'd do is to run a bunch of universes along the lines of our own to see if intelligent life like ourselves turns up.
If we succeed, did we create life? Yes. In our own image? Yes, definitely, as long as your reading of "image" is not extremely literal. Did we design it? No way. And a similar argument would apply if we jumped in further and directed evolution toward particular ends by artificial selection. We would create, but not design.
If, on the other hand, you're very literal about "image", then it requires all sorts of questions. Does your god have a nose? Does it have boogers? If not, why do I have a nose and or boogers? Is he not good at designing in his image? Et cetera.
And regardless, an approach to biblical hermeneutics that boils everything down to one sentence is generally quite weak. It's a big book. Hinging a conclusion about a complicated topic on a single verse is like doing interior decorating while looking through a toilet paper tube: an excessively narrow focus means you're going to miss things, and you're very unlikely to get the whole thing in balance.