Discovering Your Secretly Secret Sensory Experiences

The huge problem is that we lack vocabulary to talk about unique qualia. Our words come from talking to other people and if nobody around us has the same qualia as we are, nobody gave us a word.

At the moment I'm learning to distinguish colors better via an Anki deck. I use the CSS color name definition. Seeing the difference between navy and midnightblue is still hard for me but I'm confident that I can learn it with practice. Some day I will hopefully even be able to tell apart snow from floralwhite.

I like the particular deck and if someone wants to train their color perception I'm happy to share it. It's build in a way that you get progressively more difficult decisions and provides years of fun at 5 new cards per day.

I would also like to create a deck to train sound perception. Does anyone know of a good tool that can automatically produce sound files with a specific pitch for pitch training? At best a tool that can be used via the command line.

sox -n a440.mp3 synth 1 sin 440

From time to time I hear about people going to their physician when they realise something is off about their body accidentally when someone mentions something that makes them realise they are unusual in some respect. I am then often surprised that these people report the physician saying something along the lines of the phenomenon being well documented and benign.

Personally, I have a couple of tones in my ears for the first two decades of my life without realising that tinnitus is unusual and I do not know what absolute silence is. Ironically, I also have exceptionally great sensitivity to quiet sounds. And, again ironically, I have trouble understanding human speech when there is background noise.

I was surprised when I first moved in with roommates to see how one of them and some of the neighbours were just absolutely noisy. After some inquiry I realised that they are just not as bothered by noise as I am. Oh and apparently they are unable to hear as sensitively as I do.

Further, I hate background music above a certain, quite low, threshhold if I want to maintain a conversation. Other people's conversations are similarly challenging. These facts do explain quite nicely why so many people like clubs, bars or pubs but I do not.

There are plenty of these little things and it maddens me every time I see psychological studies or policy assuming homogenity in the human population. We are different in so many often quantifiable ways. I am not sure yet of the practical use of these little facts but I am sure there is.

The presence of an object (or even my own finger) near the center of my forehead causes a tingling sensation, which can even shift directions (but still, always centered on my forehead) as the object moves.

I suspect I'm a supertaster. I'm extremely sensitive to bitter flavors, to the point where I can't eat olives or drink beer or coffee. It's torture for me. My father always complained that I put too much sugar into the coffee I made for him, but whenever I tested it I couldn't imagine how anyone was able to stand it without at least four spoonfuls. Every single person I know will swear to me that bell peppers are sweet, but in my mouth they taste a murderous bitter. Celery is out of the question for the same reason.

Both my eyes may from time to time perceive colors in a different way. When they do, one would see everything in more greenish-blue hues, the other in more red-yellowish hues. It's often the case when I closed one eye for a moment, or when that eye was on the pillow side after resting. So I assume it's either temperature-related, or simply that one of my eyes' cone cells were too exposed to, say, red, because of red light filtering through my closed eyelid, and therefore were less sensitive to it afterwards.

(I scored 3 on http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-well-do-you-see-color-173018)

I think I have qualia associated with small numbers.

The closest analogy I can think of is "butterflies in your stomach, but with a pitch". I say pitch not because it's auditory (it's not), but because it seems to be the same feeling but higher or lower for different numbers (not in intensity, but in ... pitch).

I think that I lack a precise sense of relative pitch over time - as in I can only easily compare tones that are simultaneous or directly one after the other. Give me three tones where pitch first, say, raises and then lowers again, unless they are either identical or a good octave apart I have a hard time telling if the first or third is higher in pitch.

I have a friend who was surprised to discover the concept of a "lucid dream". It turns out all of his dreams are lucid and he assumed it's the same for all people.

A psychological experience I have (albeit very rarely). I suddenly realize that I am really me. In comparison, all the rest of life feels like watching a movie in which I am just one of the characters. Sorry if it came out confusing, it's a bit hard to explain! With age the occurrence seem to have become even rarer (I don't remember when I had the last one but it might have been over 10 years ago).

When I am in familiar surroundings, I feel like I can very easily go to the next room or out of the building at all, and it's a bit like I have already gone there. I don't mean any kind of 'out of body experience', just that there's some fuzziness in my mind about where exactly I am. In contrast, when I got stuck in an airport halfway across North America, with some uncertainty as to whether I would reach my destination the next day or the day after that, I felt very clearly that I was exactly bound by my body. The world began, sharply, just outside my eyes. Has anybody felt the same?

Ability to distinguish taste varies quite a bit, with some people only really tasting strong flavors.

I can distinguish patterns in higher tones in music better than low tones. All drum and bass music sounds indistinguishable to me.

Vocal patterns have a bigger influence on interpersonal communication than generally assumed. Interruption vs waiting, deeper vs higher tone voices, pace, non-word vocalization, physical expressiveness (hands, face, body) etc. Some people find certain patterns attractive/aversive and this influences how seriously you take the speaker.

I have two such perceptions which may or may not be related.

Since I am very young every now and then I have had an temporary alternation of vision. Suddenly everything looks much farther away than it is and as if I'm looking through a tunnel with dark and/or blurry sides. When I was young, maybe 12 years old and told my parents this the thought I were tired. But I wasn't. It happens during the day. It is distracting but it goes away after closing the eyes for some time and resting. Or whatever. Doesn't stay longer than an hour.

The other thing is a hightend perception of touch (and possibly other senses) which starts during drowsiness before sleep sets in. I can feel every ripple on the bed towel. I feel every unevenness on the bed post. I am aware or every smallest crumble in the bed. It is interesting and of course I get more awake but then it goes away after some time.

The last time it happend I tried to determine whether the perceptions is really more precise or whether I just feel it as more intense (like contrast enhancing a picture doesn't show more details). It was inconclusive (as I didn't have suitable material to test and when I get up the effect faded). I still think that at least I was aware of more details but could have felt them with proper training even without this state.

When I say every now and then I mean a few times a year and the last time was longer than a year ago. It declined with age.

I understand that comparable effects are not unusual for migraine which I also have sometimes, but these do not seem to correlate for me. I once looked up the effect but can no longer find the link. Sorry.

I knew that these effects where somewhat special but I didn't assume that everybody has them nor that nobody else has them.

Human genetic diversity is huge and still increasing quickly:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121128132259.htm

I bet half of the 'deleterious' mutations mentioned in the article relate to more or less unusual experiences.