Lessons from a time loop

I refer here to the recently reported (see here) ‘time loop’ experience. Briefly, it involved two versions of the same events witnessed sequentially. One was real, the other a microsleep with REM (MWR – see here) episode. Interestingly, though similar they contained significant differences.

Firstly, the MWR version contained a significant mistake. A wheeled case less than a metre wide somehow got caught up in some doors around two metres wide. In addition, there was no case at all in reality but a rucksack instead! Dreams, typically, are full of such factual errors. MWRs are basically waking dreams so such a mistake should not be considered surprising. What is interesting is that it might form a way of detecting if a witness’s reported experience was, in fact, hallucinatory. It would be worth asking witnesses for a complete description of everything they saw, in detail, not just the ghost. If there are any ‘factual errors’, rather than something simply apparently paranormal, it could indicate a hallucination.

Secondly, it is intriguing that the MWR played out a version of likely future events, though ahead of time. It could have shown anything but came up with a likely future, if faulty, narrative. Why?

Thirdly, why did the MWR swap a rucksack for a case? Was it simply that MA (the witness) had not taken in the whole scene before going into a MWR? Or was it following the bizarre ‘change only one thing rule’ (see here) of such experiences?