Talk:Arguments against and for Déjà vu

By Vishal Agarwal

Due to its subjective nature and a lack of specificity, Déjà vu has low evidentiary value, even when evaluated cursorily-

“Science insists that what we call déjà vu is simply a coincidental similarity between a present experience and a similar but forgotten experience. For example, someone may feel a special familiarity with a house he has never before visited, not because he lived there in a previous life but because he has at one time or another visited a similar home that unconsciously reminds him of this one. And how many of us have not from time to time had a conversation that we’ve long since forgotten that is inadvertently repeated in the present? Memory is a tricky affair that is capable of playing all sorts of pranks on us. However, this possible solution does little to explain the sheer amount of detail that is sometimes recalled in the best cases of déjà vu. Even a similarity of places or events cannot explain, for instance, how a man can correctly describe a maze of streets that lie just ahead in a small village he is visiting for the first time, nor does it seem to comfortably account for how a woman can recall with unerring exactitude the precise layout of a home she had never seen before, A similarity with places or things experienced in the past can only go so far; at some point, the odds against correctly guessing the street layout of a city or the location of various rooms within a sprawling mansion becomes astronomical.”