| ▲ | rdgthree 9 hours ago | |||||||
If you're interested in my personal chain-of-thought on the subject: This was where I started pulling this thread (October 2025): https://1393.xyz/writing/could-the-root-cause-of-alzheimers-... And this is an even further ancestor of the ideas (December 2023): https://1393.xyz/writing/are-we-only-conscious-while-were-le... I'm operating off of my own subjective experience, and this idea lines up tightly with System 1 and System 2 in cognitive psychology. It seems that many jump to "AI psychosis" when one mentions magnetic fields, but the evolutionary tree is very straightforward: 1. Nature evolves magnetoreception for navigation 2. Eventually, a brain in nature with magnetoreception accidentally "hears" its own magnetic field with with resonance 3. That lossy global summary of the brains ends up being an evolutionarily advantageous "higher-order sense" 4. Evolution sharpens the blade for many years On first principles, that seems perfectly viable and even likely given that magnetoreception was such a boon for survival for all life. Just glad others are finding it interesting! | ||||||||
| ▲ | jodrellblank 7 hours ago | parent [-] | |||||||
Then how can we exist around large magnetic fields without them affecting us mentally - no forgetting, no dropping unconscious, no trippy psychedelic experiences - seemingly nothing at all? How come our mains electricity does not not act on our minds analogously to a blowtorch on our skin, or a hydraulic press on our bones? MRI machines at 3 Tesla field strength are 100,000x stronger than the Earth's magnetic field, and pulsed very fast. They affect the spin of the nucleus of the Hydrogen atoms in the body, but apparently have no effect on the person's brain or consciousness (or biomagnetite)? We wear headphones with electromagnetic coils pulsing music on the sides of our heads for hours at a time, with no effect. We use machine's powerful electric motors, work near them, we're surrounded by alternating currents in wires, some people experiment with Tesla Coils, MagLev capable of lifting trains, wireless power delivery... (PS. Red / Arctic Foxes might be able to see the Earth's magnetic field and use it to help find mice to hunt; they listen for mice they can't see and jump-pounce into the snow and their jumps are successful at getting the mouse 80% of the time when they are facing North-East and only 18% of the time when they aren't - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/foxes-use... ) | ||||||||
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