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RadioLab did an episode on this topic “Decoding the Void” in 2014 (https://www.radiolab.org/episodes/anesthesia https://www.radiolab.org/episodes/anesthesia) th

RadioLab did an episode on this topic “Decoding the Void” in 2014 (https://www.radiolab.org/episodes/anesthesia https://www.radiolab.org/episodes/anesthesia) that, for me, pretty much deconstructed the whole idea of an afterlife in 20 minutes. What happens when we die? People commonly think of this as some kind of unknowable mystery. But people lose consciousness all the time and aren't entering the spirit world when they do so. If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like. Maybe a very pedestrian thought for some of you, but as a sincere fundamentalist zealot for most of my life, it was a big epiphany for me. (Disclaimer: I understand some will disagree intensely — I would have been among you ten years ago. I’m not here to invalidate your sincerely held beliefs, only to relate a change in my understanding.)

ColanR 4y ago
I think that's why sleep has been called the 'little death' since ancient times. In a sense, you die every time you sleep, and wake up a slightly different person. Edit: ya'll have dirty minds. Homer refers to 'sleep as the brother of death' in the Illiad. Apparently Buddha said something similar too, though I can't find a source. Edit2: just going to leave you with this: "each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death." – Arthur Schopenhauer
- CSMastermind 4y ago
  I wonder if there was some evolutionary advantage to sleep in making death less scary. If you didn't go to sleep every night, then the idea of suddenly becoming unconscious would be absolutely terrifying.
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  Ehem, it's not sleep that's called 'the little death', although it tends to happen in the same place :^)
- pnut 4y ago
  I understand that expression to have a slightly different meaning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_petite_mort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_petite_mort
- sandworm101 4y ago
  Of you see a french character speak of having a little death, it isn't about sleep. To quote the recent BBC series Versailles: "A little death is good for everyone." Louise XIV isn't talking about getting his eight hours.
- fipar 4y ago
  The Schopenhauer quote reminded me of Saucer-like by Sonic Youth. I always found this line beautiful and now wonder if Lee borrowed the idea from Schopenhauer or if it's just a coincidence: "Every day is just another breath, every night another little death"
LadyCailin 4y ago
It’s also the same as what it was like before you were born. I “remember” nothing from that time period, I felt nothing, I was not somewhere else. I simply did not exist, and nor did my consciousness.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  > It’s also the same as what it was like before you were born. 1. How do you know this? It doesn’t seem obvious that it would be the same before being born as after death 2. How do you know you just don’t remember what happened then?
dkersten 4y ago
Trying ketamine made me realize that death is probably similar, slipping away into nothingness.
ne0flex 4y ago
While the rational side of me thinks that death is probably oblivion, I just don't want to admit it. After a friend of mine passed away, I did a lot of soul searching and basically came to the conclusion that there's nothing after death. It was mentally destructive for me and sent me into a bout of depression. I'd hate to think that we're going through all this just to have your entire life multiplied by 0 at the end. People tell me life is about the journey, but the journey is fun because the memories are retained and can be reflected upon. I just hope that there is something more, if not then there isn't much point in continuing in my opinion.
- thiagoharry 4y ago
  Memories are retained. If not in your brain, then in the history, in other people's minds, in the humanity's development, and in the legacies that you created. Which is better, your memory can be destroyed by Alzheimer, but these other memories can be more resistant and could survive for a longer time. :-)
  - alok-g 4y ago
    I placed a related comment + question here on the same OP. Would like to hear your views too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32252250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32252250
- jack_pp 4y ago
  What's important is what we do with the time we have, the ripples we send out into the world. That I think is the true value of our lives
  - alok-g 4y ago
    I would like to hear more on this. Am somewhat playing a devil's advocate, but am genuinely unclear too. What's the higher importance of the impact left on the world. As per the comment you replied to, it will ultimately be multiplied to zero for each one of us. That the impact may sustain in the 'living' world feels somewhat like a propagating wave, or may be even a Ponzi scheme. Looking from a grander scheme of things, life on earth is more like moss on a stone. If our solar system gets destroyed today, our nearest galaxy would not experience the slightest thing for over a million years, and an astronomically miniscule change even after. What's the true importance of the impact left over the world?
stephen_g 4y ago
That doesn’t really make much sense to me… Seems more like a category error than anything - surely anyone who believes in any kind of spiritual afterlife would expect that death on a spiritual level is something much more than simply losing consciousness? Especially if some kind of omniscient deity is believed to be involved, why would such an entity perform any kind of transference into a spiritual realm when you weren’t properly dead?
- svnt 4y ago
  Oh man kids these days don’t remember the days of god v_alpha when we had to put people in caves and roll aside the stone every time they took a nap. So much better now that we upgraded the brainstem firmware to not make that terminate() call.
- fluoridation 4y ago
  No, the real question is, if the mind can exist independently of the body (and the brain), why does consciousness stop temporarily during certain phases of sleep? If the mind can go on even when the body dies, then it stands to reason that the brain being unconscious should pose even less of an obstacle.
  - BobbyJo 4y ago
    > brain being unconscious That's circular logic no? In any case, a good counterpoint would be blackout drunk people. They are somewhat conscious, and can interact with their environment, but if you ask them after the fact when sober what happened, it would appear to them as if they were entirely unconscious. Anesthesia proves the brain is (at least mostly) unable to access experiences that take place when it isn't recording, and that, while our mind is present in the brain, we rely on it for recall. That might be enough to draw the line for some, but obviously not everyone.
    - leereeves 4y ago
      > while our mind is present in the brain, we rely on it for recall People who believe in reincarnation must have accepted this long ago, because they can't remember their past lives, or anything that happens in between.
canjobear 4y ago
> If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like. The experience of general anesthesia is: you go under, and then suddenly you are awake (hopefully) after your operation, with no intervening memories. I don't see how this tells you what death is like. Death is like the stuff in between when you go to sleep and wake up, which you have no memory of (because there is nothing to remember). Nor is going under general anesthesia like going into death, because you believe with high probability that you are going to wake up, whereas if you are going to die you know you won't wake up.
- simonh 4y ago
  The point I think that death is just like losing conciseness completely and being just totally gone, and you just had that experience. The only difference is that with death you never come back.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - canjobear 4y ago
    You didn't have that experience though. Or if you did you don't remember anything from it. The whole point of general anesthesia is you don't experience anything while under it.
bowsamic 4y ago
> If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like How? Death is obviously very different from your body being alive an unconscious. You are just assuming they must be the same thing. Why make that assumption? The only reason I can think of is that the feeling of “time just skipped” conforms to your pre existing presumption that death will also be like that, but I don’t have that presumption. You would need to argue that death is like losing consciousness, but you haven’t tried to do so, and it’s not obvious at all to me that it is true
- keymon-o 4y ago
  I agree. The idea of relating unconsciousness with death is by making the assumption that physical world is what is driving life and consciousness. But since you are the conscious one just perceiving the physical world, physical world really doesn't need to be related to consciousness or doesn't even need to exist. Since it is a question I don't think can possibly be ever known, all options may be completely possible.
lisper 4y ago
One could argue the exact opposite: the fact that you wake from anesthesia (and sleep) with your identity intact indicates that it still exists even during these periods of unawareness. So if your identity can be restored after sleep and anesthesia, why not after death as well? (For the record: I'm totally with you that there is no life after death. All I'm saying is it's not a slam-dunk, and it is particularly not a slam-dunk on the phenomenology. You need to know a lot about how the brain works in order to conclude that there is no afterlife.)
- alok-g 4y ago
  The difference is clear. For anesthesia, it's the same brain waking up. That's not the case with death. The sense of identity should by default be associated with the brain, not with consciousness, etc.
  - lisper 4y ago
    Yes, I completely agree. My point is that in order to make that statement you have to know that the brain is the mechanism behind identity. This is not obvious a priori. In fact, it took quite a lot of work over several centuries to figure that out.
- nickjj 4y ago
  > So if your identity can be restored after sleep and anesthesia, why not after death as well? I don't know the low level details about how the brain works but... When you're sleeping and are under anesthesia your brain is still an organ that's alive. Your body as a whole exists and is functioning. I don't think this can applied to death if our definition of death is that your skin, organs and cells decompose into nothingness relatively quickly. Over time you'll reduce into a pile of bones. Your brain, heart, lungs and everything else is long gone. Your identity can only be restored at this point if you believe your identity is fully detached from your brain, in which case then you may believe your identity will continue to exist in an unknown state that as far as I know has never been measured or confirmed in human history. That is of course where lots of folks have different opinions. I'm not here to sell anyone on my opinion but I have been under IV based anesthesia before. It's a legit pause button on what we perceive as our memory or consciousness. You drift into sleep within seconds and wake up as if nothing ever happened, then feel a little groggy along with deal with whatever side effects you were put under for and your doctor will tell you what you were responding to requests during the surgery which means you were able to do things like rest your arm in this position or look to the left, etc.. But the takeaway there is your memory has a gap that can't be accounted for. If your identity is composed of your memory and anesthesia is a combination of drugs that affects chemicals in your body to alter your brain into not remembering things then we've scientifically proven your memory is directly tied into your body (brain included), otherwise if it weren't then "you" wouldn't have been paused right?
labrador 4y ago
> If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like [citation needed] I used to have a severe drug and alcohol problem. I once drank a bunch of beers and took 3 or 4 times the recommended dose of Ativan. I woke up 24 hours later from a blackout and discovered in that time I had walked to the store and bought more beer and some snacks. I had absolutely no memory of it. So I'm going to say anesthesia is not like being dead. It's more like switching the memory recorder off.
- alok-g 4y ago
  Your experiences only tell you that those were like switching the memory recorder off. It's unclear to me yet how you are able to compare it negatively to the experience of dying.
  - labrador 4y ago
    > compare it negatively to the experience of dying I'm not sure what you mean by this. My point was I was anesthetized but managed to go to the store, buy things and make it back, something dead people aren't able to manage last time I checked. Like Nicola Tesla, I believe my brain is a receiver like a radio and I actually exist in a cloud of consciousness that we all exist in, so I don't have as many negative feelings about dying that a lot of people seem to have (people who believe they cease to exist)
    - alok-g 4y ago
      I think my use of the word 'negatively' has caused a confusion. Sorry about that. What I am asking is about your comparison below. You have experienced anesthesia but not death, then how do you say the following? >> So I'm going to say anesthesia is not like being dead. ...
      - labrador 4y ago
        I anesthetized myself to the point of complete blackout for 24 hours I walked to the store and purchased things Dead people don't walk to the store and purchase things Therefore being anesthetized is not like being dead
heavenlyblue 4y ago
> What happens when we die? People commonly think of this as some kind of unknowable mystery. But people lose consciousness all the time and aren't entering the spirit world when they do so. It's like asking "Where does the car engine's 'brrrrrrrr' sound go when it runs out of petrol?" or "Where does the plane go when it spontaneously disassembles at full speed into a mountain?".
whatshisface 4y ago
>If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like. Death will be like waking up somewhere else with no sense of time having passed?
- BossingAround 4y ago
  That's a misquote/misunderstanding of OP's point. The point was rather that the quality of being in anesthesia is likely very similar, if not the same, as the quality of being dead, i.e. no qualia at all (at least, if anesthesia was done properly).
nerdjon 4y ago
I have to say, as someone who very much believes as you do (no after life or anything related). The idea of this kinda scares me? I have never been under anesthesia, but I have kinda accepted that at some point in the not too distant future I will likely need to be for my knees and/or carpal tunnel. But something about being under it basically being like experiencing death just, it reinforces those fears even more of not waking up. Like you know it's a possibility, but the connection is a bit of a jarring one. It is times like this that I understand why religion is so strong. Having the belief that when you do die that you will live on... would be one hell of a comforting one.
- blue1 4y ago
  It is not scaring, because you do not experience anything at all. Time under anesthesia does not exist: it feels like you wake up at the same time you lose consciousness, with nothing in between.
- Buttons840 4y ago
  Don't be scared, anesthesia is like a really good nap. I'd do it for fun if it was safe and cheap.
  - nerdjon 4y ago
    It really just boils down to a fear of death. I have tried talking to a therapist about this many times and ultimately it comes down to. Fear of missing certain experiences, scientific discoveries, etc. But then logically I tell myself... I won't be alive to fear that? But then that thought sends me down a spiral on its own. Like its an illogical fear, the very nature of death you would not have any regrets... since you can't. But... yeah. It is all kinda of weird.
- BossingAround 4y ago
  The fear of not waking up is not necessary. When you do not wake up, no fear can exist. It's usually the pain before dying people are scared of. That is an understandable fear, one that is commonly exploited by humans (e.g. torture).
BurningFrog 4y ago
We could be entering the spirit world but not retain any memories from it.
ijidak 4y ago
Agree 100% regarding sleep-like death. You might enjoy this video: https://www.jw.org/finder?srcid=jwlshare&wtlocale=E&lank=docid-502017858_1_VIDEO https://www.jw.org/finder?srcid=jwlshare&wtlocale=E&lank=doc...

ColanR 4y ago

I think that's why sleep has been called the 'little death' since ancient times. In a sense, you die every time you sleep, and wake up a slightly different person. Edit: ya'll have dirty minds. Homer refers to 'sleep as the brother of death' in the Illiad. Apparently Buddha said something similar too, though I can't find a source. Edit2: just going to leave you with this: "each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death." – Arthur Schopenhauer

CSMastermind 4y ago
I wonder if there was some evolutionary advantage to sleep in making death less scary. If you didn't go to sleep every night, then the idea of suddenly becoming unconscious would be absolutely terrifying.
wing-_-nuts 4y ago
Ehem, it's not sleep that's called 'the little death', although it tends to happen in the same place :^)
pnut 4y ago
I understand that expression to have a slightly different meaning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_petite_mort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_petite_mort
sandworm101 4y ago
Of you see a french character speak of having a little death, it isn't about sleep. To quote the recent BBC series Versailles: "A little death is good for everyone." Louise XIV isn't talking about getting his eight hours.
fipar 4y ago
The Schopenhauer quote reminded me of Saucer-like by Sonic Youth. I always found this line beautiful and now wonder if Lee borrowed the idea from Schopenhauer or if it's just a coincidence: "Every day is just another breath, every night another little death"

LadyCailin 4y ago

It’s also the same as what it was like before you were born. I “remember” nothing from that time period, I felt nothing, I was not somewhere else. I simply did not exist, and nor did my consciousness.

bowsamic 4y ago
> It’s also the same as what it was like before you were born. 1. How do you know this? It doesn’t seem obvious that it would be the same before being born as after death 2. How do you know you just don’t remember what happened then?

dkersten 4y ago

Trying ketamine made me realize that death is probably similar, slipping away into nothingness.

ne0flex 4y ago

While the rational side of me thinks that death is probably oblivion, I just don't want to admit it. After a friend of mine passed away, I did a lot of soul searching and basically came to the conclusion that there's nothing after death. It was mentally destructive for me and sent me into a bout of depression. I'd hate to think that we're going through all this just to have your entire life multiplied by 0 at the end. People tell me life is about the journey, but the journey is fun because the memories are retained and can be reflected upon. I just hope that there is something more, if not then there isn't much point in continuing in my opinion.

thiagoharry 4y ago
Memories are retained. If not in your brain, then in the history, in other people's minds, in the humanity's development, and in the legacies that you created. Which is better, your memory can be destroyed by Alzheimer, but these other memories can be more resistant and could survive for a longer time. :-)
- alok-g 4y ago
  I placed a related comment + question here on the same OP. Would like to hear your views too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32252250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32252250
jack_pp 4y ago
What's important is what we do with the time we have, the ripples we send out into the world. That I think is the true value of our lives
- alok-g 4y ago
  I would like to hear more on this. Am somewhat playing a devil's advocate, but am genuinely unclear too. What's the higher importance of the impact left on the world. As per the comment you replied to, it will ultimately be multiplied to zero for each one of us. That the impact may sustain in the 'living' world feels somewhat like a propagating wave, or may be even a Ponzi scheme. Looking from a grander scheme of things, life on earth is more like moss on a stone. If our solar system gets destroyed today, our nearest galaxy would not experience the slightest thing for over a million years, and an astronomically miniscule change even after. What's the true importance of the impact left over the world?

stephen_g 4y ago

That doesn’t really make much sense to me… Seems more like a category error than anything - surely anyone who believes in any kind of spiritual afterlife would expect that death on a spiritual level is something much more than simply losing consciousness? Especially if some kind of omniscient deity is believed to be involved, why would such an entity perform any kind of transference into a spiritual realm when you weren’t properly dead?

svnt 4y ago
Oh man kids these days don’t remember the days of god v_alpha when we had to put people in caves and roll aside the stone every time they took a nap. So much better now that we upgraded the brainstem firmware to not make that terminate() call.
fluoridation 4y ago
No, the real question is, if the mind can exist independently of the body (and the brain), why does consciousness stop temporarily during certain phases of sleep? If the mind can go on even when the body dies, then it stands to reason that the brain being unconscious should pose even less of an obstacle.
- BobbyJo 4y ago
  > brain being unconscious That's circular logic no? In any case, a good counterpoint would be blackout drunk people. They are somewhat conscious, and can interact with their environment, but if you ask them after the fact when sober what happened, it would appear to them as if they were entirely unconscious. Anesthesia proves the brain is (at least mostly) unable to access experiences that take place when it isn't recording, and that, while our mind is present in the brain, we rely on it for recall. That might be enough to draw the line for some, but obviously not everyone.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    > while our mind is present in the brain, we rely on it for recall People who believe in reincarnation must have accepted this long ago, because they can't remember their past lives, or anything that happens in between.

canjobear 4y ago

> If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like. The experience of general anesthesia is: you go under, and then suddenly you are awake (hopefully) after your operation, with no intervening memories. I don't see how this tells you what death is like. Death is like the stuff in between when you go to sleep and wake up, which you have no memory of (because there is nothing to remember). Nor is going under general anesthesia like going into death, because you believe with high probability that you are going to wake up, whereas if you are going to die you know you won't wake up.

simonh 4y ago
The point I think that death is just like losing conciseness completely and being just totally gone, and you just had that experience. The only difference is that with death you never come back.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- canjobear 4y ago
  You didn't have that experience though. Or if you did you don't remember anything from it. The whole point of general anesthesia is you don't experience anything while under it.

bowsamic 4y ago

> If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like How? Death is obviously very different from your body being alive an unconscious. You are just assuming they must be the same thing. Why make that assumption? The only reason I can think of is that the feeling of “time just skipped” conforms to your pre existing presumption that death will also be like that, but I don’t have that presumption. You would need to argue that death is like losing consciousness, but you haven’t tried to do so, and it’s not obvious at all to me that it is true

keymon-o 4y ago
I agree. The idea of relating unconsciousness with death is by making the assumption that physical world is what is driving life and consciousness. But since you are the conscious one just perceiving the physical world, physical world really doesn't need to be related to consciousness or doesn't even need to exist. Since it is a question I don't think can possibly be ever known, all options may be completely possible.

lisper 4y ago

One could argue the exact opposite: the fact that you wake from anesthesia (and sleep) with your identity intact indicates that it still exists even during these periods of unawareness. So if your identity can be restored after sleep and anesthesia, why not after death as well? (For the record: I'm totally with you that there is no life after death. All I'm saying is it's not a slam-dunk, and it is particularly not a slam-dunk on the phenomenology. You need to know a lot about how the brain works in order to conclude that there is no afterlife.)

alok-g 4y ago
The difference is clear. For anesthesia, it's the same brain waking up. That's not the case with death. The sense of identity should by default be associated with the brain, not with consciousness, etc.
- lisper 4y ago
  Yes, I completely agree. My point is that in order to make that statement you have to know that the brain is the mechanism behind identity. This is not obvious a priori. In fact, it took quite a lot of work over several centuries to figure that out.
nickjj 4y ago
> So if your identity can be restored after sleep and anesthesia, why not after death as well? I don't know the low level details about how the brain works but... When you're sleeping and are under anesthesia your brain is still an organ that's alive. Your body as a whole exists and is functioning. I don't think this can applied to death if our definition of death is that your skin, organs and cells decompose into nothingness relatively quickly. Over time you'll reduce into a pile of bones. Your brain, heart, lungs and everything else is long gone. Your identity can only be restored at this point if you believe your identity is fully detached from your brain, in which case then you may believe your identity will continue to exist in an unknown state that as far as I know has never been measured or confirmed in human history. That is of course where lots of folks have different opinions. I'm not here to sell anyone on my opinion but I have been under IV based anesthesia before. It's a legit pause button on what we perceive as our memory or consciousness. You drift into sleep within seconds and wake up as if nothing ever happened, then feel a little groggy along with deal with whatever side effects you were put under for and your doctor will tell you what you were responding to requests during the surgery which means you were able to do things like rest your arm in this position or look to the left, etc.. But the takeaway there is your memory has a gap that can't be accounted for. If your identity is composed of your memory and anesthesia is a combination of drugs that affects chemicals in your body to alter your brain into not remembering things then we've scientifically proven your memory is directly tied into your body (brain included), otherwise if it weren't then "you" wouldn't have been paused right?

labrador 4y ago

> If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like [citation needed] I used to have a severe drug and alcohol problem. I once drank a bunch of beers and took 3 or 4 times the recommended dose of Ativan. I woke up 24 hours later from a blackout and discovered in that time I had walked to the store and bought more beer and some snacks. I had absolutely no memory of it. So I'm going to say anesthesia is not like being dead. It's more like switching the memory recorder off.

alok-g 4y ago
Your experiences only tell you that those were like switching the memory recorder off. It's unclear to me yet how you are able to compare it negatively to the experience of dying.
- labrador 4y ago
  > compare it negatively to the experience of dying I'm not sure what you mean by this. My point was I was anesthetized but managed to go to the store, buy things and make it back, something dead people aren't able to manage last time I checked. Like Nicola Tesla, I believe my brain is a receiver like a radio and I actually exist in a cloud of consciousness that we all exist in, so I don't have as many negative feelings about dying that a lot of people seem to have (people who believe they cease to exist)
  - alok-g 4y ago
    I think my use of the word 'negatively' has caused a confusion. Sorry about that. What I am asking is about your comparison below. You have experienced anesthesia but not death, then how do you say the following? >> So I'm going to say anesthesia is not like being dead. ...
    - labrador 4y ago
      I anesthetized myself to the point of complete blackout for 24 hours I walked to the store and purchased things Dead people don't walk to the store and purchase things Therefore being anesthetized is not like being dead

heavenlyblue 4y ago

> What happens when we die? People commonly think of this as some kind of unknowable mystery. But people lose consciousness all the time and aren't entering the spirit world when they do so. It's like asking "Where does the car engine's 'brrrrrrrr' sound go when it runs out of petrol?" or "Where does the plane go when it spontaneously disassembles at full speed into a mountain?".

whatshisface 4y ago

>If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like. Death will be like waking up somewhere else with no sense of time having passed?

BossingAround 4y ago
That's a misquote/misunderstanding of OP's point. The point was rather that the quality of being in anesthesia is likely very similar, if not the same, as the quality of being dead, i.e. no qualia at all (at least, if anesthesia was done properly).

nerdjon 4y ago

I have to say, as someone who very much believes as you do (no after life or anything related). The idea of this kinda scares me? I have never been under anesthesia, but I have kinda accepted that at some point in the not too distant future I will likely need to be for my knees and/or carpal tunnel. But something about being under it basically being like experiencing death just, it reinforces those fears even more of not waking up. Like you know it's a possibility, but the connection is a bit of a jarring one. It is times like this that I understand why religion is so strong. Having the belief that when you do die that you will live on... would be one hell of a comforting one.

blue1 4y ago
It is not scaring, because you do not experience anything at all. Time under anesthesia does not exist: it feels like you wake up at the same time you lose consciousness, with nothing in between.
Buttons840 4y ago
Don't be scared, anesthesia is like a really good nap. I'd do it for fun if it was safe and cheap.
- nerdjon 4y ago
  It really just boils down to a fear of death. I have tried talking to a therapist about this many times and ultimately it comes down to. Fear of missing certain experiences, scientific discoveries, etc. But then logically I tell myself... I won't be alive to fear that? But then that thought sends me down a spiral on its own. Like its an illogical fear, the very nature of death you would not have any regrets... since you can't. But... yeah. It is all kinda of weird.
BossingAround 4y ago
The fear of not waking up is not necessary. When you do not wake up, no fear can exist. It's usually the pain before dying people are scared of. That is an understandable fear, one that is commonly exploited by humans (e.g. torture).

BurningFrog 4y ago

We could be entering the spirit world but not retain any memories from it.

ijidak 4y ago

Agree 100% regarding sleep-like death. You might enjoy this video: https://www.jw.org/finder?srcid=jwlshare&wtlocale=E&lank=docid-502017858_1_VIDEO https://www.jw.org/finder?srcid=jwlshare&wtlocale=E&lank=doc...