4 ms·

> “There is nothing here to begin to enable us to propose that on DMT, you literally transcend the laws of this universe and do actually go to another world,” h

> “There is nothing here to begin to enable us to propose that on DMT, you literally transcend the laws of this universe and do actually go to another world,” he says. This is faulty thinking. An afterlife doesn’t presuppose a violation of natural laws, or a separate world. It just means you continue living in a different form. The only thing that would be required for that is a causal relationship (yet to be observed in science) between your dying mind and some other living structure. The causal eelationship needn’t even be mind-out. If your mind is caused by the enduring structure and you experience its presence at death, that would be physically indistinguishable from you becoming that thing. Given that we continue to discover entirely new structures in both the biological world and our own bodies, which were hiding in plain sight, I don’t find this implausible. That’s not to mention psychoaocial structures which science hardly can model, and to which our individual minds are very tightly coupled.

spraak 8y ago
Thanks for sharing that, it really helped me unlock some mental pathways for me.
drakonka 8y ago
Thank you for sharing. I think too often we assume the concept of an "afterlife" implies some kind of supernatural or religious phenomenon. Since we don't have proof of it I can't say I definitely believe such a thing exists, but I certainly believe it's possible. If there is an "afterlife" I believe it fits into our natural laws and can be explained and observed scientifically - we just haven't discovered all of the information we need yet.
- filoeleven 8y ago
  It’s tricky, because the kinds of natural laws that are necessary for the existence of an afterlife are the same kinds of natural laws that invalidate the principle of physicalism or materialism, which is the consensus view of the scientific establishment today. So if you decide to investigate something easier to test for than “the afterlife” which could also plausibly exist with these expanded natural laws—like remote viewing, or the effects that consciousness has on physical systems—your research will be generally dismissed as quackery. Not many folks will try to replicate your results, or even spend the effort to examine them deeply for flaws, because the assumption is “we already know that cannot happen, so you’ve done something wrong in your setup or you’re lying.” There is plenty of evidence out there that points to something odd going on; the challenge lies in getting more skeptics to seriously evaluate it. Some HNer years ago turned me onto the book Irreducible Mind, whose last hundred pages or so is a bibliography of evidence for this kind of thing provided by people who say “I don’t believe it, but I can’t explain it.” But a lot of that evidence comes from skeptics testing exceptional individuals, and James Randi did a good job of showing how fakers can fool scientists, so I can’t really say how reliable it is other than as a jumping-off point for further study. I came across an interesting and more rigorous set of studies done recently on how consciousness can influence quantum effects. They had observers try to influence the amount of interference generated by the double-slit experiment, and have repeatedly under various conditions gotten a significant effect. Perhaps most interesting is that while all humans had an effect, the meditators reliably outperformed the non-meditators. The setup is simple enough that it’s just begging for replication. Here’s the video link for any curious folks. Skip the first 5 minutes which is just a refresher on what the double slit experiment is: https://youtu.be/nRSBaq3vAeY https://youtu.be/nRSBaq3vAeY
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    > the existence of an afterlife are the same kinds of natural laws that invalidate the principle of physicalism or materialism I don't see why that follows. There are lots of phenomena in the world, like money, which are manifest in a non-physical substrate. Many many other things are immaterial. The characters I am typing right now are immaterial. There are bits in memory that represent the characters, but it's only in interplay with an entire system of physical structures that you can say the characters themselves are manifest. You can't point somewhere and say "that's where the character is". It's diffuse across a bunch systems in such a way that it's not manifest in any one location. Almost all of our social and political realities are like this. Where is Conservatism? Where is calculus? These are not things with locations, which is what makes them extremely difficult to study, which is why so many people reject things like Social Psychology or Science Studies as bunk science. Money, algebra, and the capital M that starts this sentence are all things that exist, in a way that's totally compatible with materialism. It's not necessary to claim that these things exist outside of a material substrate. They merely exist above it. Distinct from it, yet contained within it. Fully determined by its laws, but not described by them.
    - meowface 8y ago
      Consciousness is an abstract, non-physical structure and concept, but everything we know suggests it is inextricably tied to and an emergent phenomenon of the brain. In the distant future there may be a way to extract and transfer consciousness into a new substrate, but with current technology, there's no reason to believe any sort of life, consciousness, sentience, awareness, etc. after death is possible at all. Just because it's possible in theory doesn't mean that applies to any currently living humans.
      - erikpukinskis 8y ago
        > everything we know suggests it is inextricably tied to and an emergent phenomenon of the brain I don’t think that’s universally accepted. I think trees are conscious and they have no brain. I think the brain does create an illusion that other things are not conscious. It tricks us into thinking our own consciousnesses are distinct from the rest of consciousness. And that’s been a useful adaptation for us. And it confuses the hell out of consciousness philosophers. But we were conscious before we evolved it. It’s possible we were human before we evolved it. > In the distant future there may be a way to extract and transfer consciousness into a new substrate It’s possible such a thing already exists. We have ancient stories about it. If it were true it would be very difficult to detect. If the universe is a simulation then it seems extremely unlikely that consciousnesses would never be read, just operating until they get eaten by the 2nd law.
ikeyany 8y ago
> If your mind is caused by the enduring structure and you experience its presence at death, that would be physically indistinguishable from you becoming that thing. 'You', 'experience', 'presence', and 'thing' are far too ill-defined for this to have meaning here.
therein 8y ago
Very well put. Not taking a stance, but rather just analyzing the constraints on possible conclusions. > The only thing that would be required for that is a causal relationship (yet to be observed in science) between your dying mind and some other living structure. Especially this part is phrased so accurately. Of course we are yet to observe anything similar to it either. Something that survives death and is capable of supporting thought. It would have to be something material, right?
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  Material yes. Not necessarily atomic though. Probably electrical since consciousness seems fairly electrical for humans. Personally, I think the idea that you and I are separate is an illusion we evolved in order to protect ourselves more fiercely and to be more willing to kill. Without it, you would understand that you are not separate from the rest of the living world, that your mind is a space where many immortal psychic creatures cross paths. And part of life is to locate your self, that specific set of crossings, in the world. So, immortal life just means dissociating from your body and associating with your crossings as they are in the world. (DMT is a dissociative so you can see how it could help.) A fully “enlightened” person will have located a complete, stable set of crossings, dissociated from everything else in their body, and broadcast that message out into the biosphere sufficiently long enough for it to be recorded. There is more to this picture, involving non-“enlightened” reincarnation, which is something the inverse of those crossings will do at death as a form of rebalancing the consciousnesses disks, like a RAID array. Most of these things are psychosocial. Believing them is more a matter of believing that you are as much a psychosocial being as you are a physical one.

spraak 8y ago

Thanks for sharing that, it really helped me unlock some mental pathways for me.

drakonka 8y ago

Thank you for sharing. I think too often we assume the concept of an "afterlife" implies some kind of supernatural or religious phenomenon. Since we don't have proof of it I can't say I definitely believe such a thing exists, but I certainly believe it's possible. If there is an "afterlife" I believe it fits into our natural laws and can be explained and observed scientifically - we just haven't discovered all of the information we need yet.

filoeleven 8y ago
It’s tricky, because the kinds of natural laws that are necessary for the existence of an afterlife are the same kinds of natural laws that invalidate the principle of physicalism or materialism, which is the consensus view of the scientific establishment today. So if you decide to investigate something easier to test for than “the afterlife” which could also plausibly exist with these expanded natural laws—like remote viewing, or the effects that consciousness has on physical systems—your research will be generally dismissed as quackery. Not many folks will try to replicate your results, or even spend the effort to examine them deeply for flaws, because the assumption is “we already know that cannot happen, so you’ve done something wrong in your setup or you’re lying.” There is plenty of evidence out there that points to something odd going on; the challenge lies in getting more skeptics to seriously evaluate it. Some HNer years ago turned me onto the book Irreducible Mind, whose last hundred pages or so is a bibliography of evidence for this kind of thing provided by people who say “I don’t believe it, but I can’t explain it.” But a lot of that evidence comes from skeptics testing exceptional individuals, and James Randi did a good job of showing how fakers can fool scientists, so I can’t really say how reliable it is other than as a jumping-off point for further study. I came across an interesting and more rigorous set of studies done recently on how consciousness can influence quantum effects. They had observers try to influence the amount of interference generated by the double-slit experiment, and have repeatedly under various conditions gotten a significant effect. Perhaps most interesting is that while all humans had an effect, the meditators reliably outperformed the non-meditators. The setup is simple enough that it’s just begging for replication. Here’s the video link for any curious folks. Skip the first 5 minutes which is just a refresher on what the double slit experiment is: https://youtu.be/nRSBaq3vAeY https://youtu.be/nRSBaq3vAeY
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  > the existence of an afterlife are the same kinds of natural laws that invalidate the principle of physicalism or materialism I don't see why that follows. There are lots of phenomena in the world, like money, which are manifest in a non-physical substrate. Many many other things are immaterial. The characters I am typing right now are immaterial. There are bits in memory that represent the characters, but it's only in interplay with an entire system of physical structures that you can say the characters themselves are manifest. You can't point somewhere and say "that's where the character is". It's diffuse across a bunch systems in such a way that it's not manifest in any one location. Almost all of our social and political realities are like this. Where is Conservatism? Where is calculus? These are not things with locations, which is what makes them extremely difficult to study, which is why so many people reject things like Social Psychology or Science Studies as bunk science. Money, algebra, and the capital M that starts this sentence are all things that exist, in a way that's totally compatible with materialism. It's not necessary to claim that these things exist outside of a material substrate. They merely exist above it. Distinct from it, yet contained within it. Fully determined by its laws, but not described by them.
  - meowface 8y ago
    Consciousness is an abstract, non-physical structure and concept, but everything we know suggests it is inextricably tied to and an emergent phenomenon of the brain. In the distant future there may be a way to extract and transfer consciousness into a new substrate, but with current technology, there's no reason to believe any sort of life, consciousness, sentience, awareness, etc. after death is possible at all. Just because it's possible in theory doesn't mean that applies to any currently living humans.
    - erikpukinskis 8y ago
      > everything we know suggests it is inextricably tied to and an emergent phenomenon of the brain I don’t think that’s universally accepted. I think trees are conscious and they have no brain. I think the brain does create an illusion that other things are not conscious. It tricks us into thinking our own consciousnesses are distinct from the rest of consciousness. And that’s been a useful adaptation for us. And it confuses the hell out of consciousness philosophers. But we were conscious before we evolved it. It’s possible we were human before we evolved it. > In the distant future there may be a way to extract and transfer consciousness into a new substrate It’s possible such a thing already exists. We have ancient stories about it. If it were true it would be very difficult to detect. If the universe is a simulation then it seems extremely unlikely that consciousnesses would never be read, just operating until they get eaten by the 2nd law.

ikeyany 8y ago

> If your mind is caused by the enduring structure and you experience its presence at death, that would be physically indistinguishable from you becoming that thing. 'You', 'experience', 'presence', and 'thing' are far too ill-defined for this to have meaning here.

therein 8y ago

Very well put. Not taking a stance, but rather just analyzing the constraints on possible conclusions. > The only thing that would be required for that is a causal relationship (yet to be observed in science) between your dying mind and some other living structure. Especially this part is phrased so accurately. Of course we are yet to observe anything similar to it either. Something that survives death and is capable of supporting thought. It would have to be something material, right?

erikpukinskis 8y ago
Material yes. Not necessarily atomic though. Probably electrical since consciousness seems fairly electrical for humans. Personally, I think the idea that you and I are separate is an illusion we evolved in order to protect ourselves more fiercely and to be more willing to kill. Without it, you would understand that you are not separate from the rest of the living world, that your mind is a space where many immortal psychic creatures cross paths. And part of life is to locate your self, that specific set of crossings, in the world. So, immortal life just means dissociating from your body and associating with your crossings as they are in the world. (DMT is a dissociative so you can see how it could help.) A fully “enlightened” person will have located a complete, stable set of crossings, dissociated from everything else in their body, and broadcast that message out into the biosphere sufficiently long enough for it to be recorded. There is more to this picture, involving non-“enlightened” reincarnation, which is something the inverse of those crossings will do at death as a form of rebalancing the consciousnesses disks, like a RAID array. Most of these things are psychosocial. Believing them is more a matter of believing that you are as much a psychosocial being as you are a physical one.