Between confirmation bias, human pattern recognition even where there are none, under/in-development brains, higher fantasy and creativity in children, less separation and knowledge about inner and outer experience, and dreaming/dream-like hallucinations, I’m skeptical any of it to be true.

Every discovery and connection they make read like possible fallacies, misattributions, confirmation-bias.

The sheer mass of humans means random hallucinations will match adult knowledge and sometimes deceased people. 2.2k across the world, and a third of them without a deceased match doesn’t seem implausible to that.

a mechanism that might explain how a person could recall living a past life

For centuries Europe knew and experienced witchcraft and other demons. The U.S. experienced aliens and abductions - but only after they became popular in the media. The human race is great at hallucinating, even on a broad societal level and with confidence.

We can explain many misattributed traditions, hysteria, and other behaviors and hallucinations. We hallucinate more of what we heard of than if we hadn’t. I don’t see why we would find a past-life remembering more likely than faulty human nature. Which I guess requires some knowledge and awareness about human history and perception.

There have also been numerous cases of people lying for the hell of it or publicity. I’m certain some people make use of this theory / legend too.

I’m reminded of AI hallucinating facts, which seems like an interesting analogy. :P (In a more narrow and artificial, trained system. If it can happen there, why would it not in more complex systems/the human brain.)

The article was too long for me. I only read through the first two sections.