20 ms·

Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

168 points by RafelMri 3y ago

andyjohnson0 3y ago
> The sensation of moving down a tunnel towards a bright light, reliving past memories and hearing or seeing deceased relatives have all been reported by people from many cultures who have had a brush with death. Sceptics, however, say these experiences could be caused by people hallucinating as they recover in hospital. The way that the default is presented here is interesting. Interpreting the experiences as hallucinations makes you a "sceptic" - presumably a sceptic of them being evidence for some kind of afterlife. Whether or not brain activity records of dying people are available, treating these subjective experiences as anything other than naturalistic in origin seems bizarre to me.
- spacephysics 3y ago
  Unfortunately many things in western culture that get close to mysticism are disregarded as hallucinations or random neurological firings. Same goes with dreams and such. It’s the ‘religion of science’ defaulting to the ‘god’ of deconstructionism. Just hallucinations, nothing more. I understand why, there’s certainly many things which were once said to be mystic, but ended up less so. However, anyone who has done respectable doses of psychedelics probably agrees with me that there’s a bit more to dreams, NDE and afterlife than “random” neurological firings.
  - leroy-is-here 3y ago
    I don’t understand the why anymore. More than 2000 years ago, we understood that we must be a sum of parts and that kind of idea yielded the atom. We applied the atom to many kinds of structures to discern their nature. Now, atom means some scientific particle. We simply have more things to name, but still constantly run into things we cannot name yet. We think this will end but it will not. If our universe is ever expanding, how can it?
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      > We think this will end but it will not. If our universe is ever expanding, how can it? Heat death of the universe?
    - ajuc 3y ago
      > still constantly run into things we cannot name yet. Humanity has the opposite problem - we invent names for things that don't exist. We have no idea what dark matter is, but we have a name handy just in case. Same with gods, elves, dragons, aliens, etc. I can't find one example of people not being able to name something that exist. Worst case just name it "phenomenon X" where X is the first unused integer. I can find lots of examples of people naming things that don't exist. See phlogiston and ether for example, if you don't like fantasy and religion.
      - leroy-is-here 3y ago
        I think we have both problems, actually. We definitely have names that are good, like New York, Justice, Earth, Peace, Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker. But we also have names of things which are bad, because they are false. These the are names which are you talking about.
      - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        > I can't find one example of people not being able to name something that exist How about "The smallest positive integer not definable in under sixty letters"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry_paradox
  - danbruc 3y ago
    However, anyone who has done respectable doses of psychedelics probably agrees with me that there’s a bit more to dreams, NDE and afterlife than “random” neurological firings. Why would that be the case? If anything, it seems to me, taking psychedelics will teach you that tiny amounts of chemicals can drastically alter how your brain works, especially how it perceives the world.
    - leroy-is-here 3y ago
      If tiny chemicals can do that to you, because you ingested them, what about all of the other things you ingest, including sound, which cause chemicals in your brain to make reactions?
      - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        Sounds do have a strong effect on people's emotions, but they don't tend to affect the way in which you think (maybe emotionally) in the same way that psychedelics can do.
        leroy-is-here 3y ago
        Words, transmitted by sound _absolutely_, without a single doubt, can affect the thoughts of an individual. And, of course, horns and loud sounds and noises will also affect the thoughts.
        ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        Those affect your thoughts, but don't really change the manner in which you think to the same degree that psychedelics do. I'd grant some exceptions such as a zen student receiving a lesson/koan that drastically changes their thought processes, but I'd argue that the change was already within them and the sound was just the catalyst - the same lesson/koan is unlikely to have similar effects on other people, and certainly not without the recipient having spent time studying that religion/philosophy.
  - eimrine 3y ago
    > However, anyone who has done respectable doses of psychedelics probably agrees with me that there’s a bit more to dreams, NDE and afterlife than “random” neurological firings. Maybe anyone except of me. I am really comfortable when hallucinations are called as hallucinations despite of does they have any esoteric sense or not. All esoteric understanding of hallucination are really better to keep distance from science before some study will give a ground to consider more. You must distinguish known things from unknown things unless you are comfortable to be a not wise person.
  - rapnie 3y ago
    > Just hallucinations, nothing more. [..] “random” neurological firings. With 'just' and 'random' you are in a similar way derogatory to the 'religion of science' in favor of mysticism. If in a healthy and awake state it is our brains that model the full brunt of reality we perceive (an assumption, may be 'mysticism' involved here), then these hallucinations may be just as real seeming to a person, though not based on usual sensory input. Maybe based on past experience, memories. Maybe unconsciously collected until 're-lived' in the hallucination.
  - stinos 3y ago
    I don't agree there's more to it than random firings, but only in the sense they aren't quite random at all. For the rest I do still think there's nothing more to it than that. The biochemistry behind psychedelics is fairly well-researched and can be explained, so while there is a random component to it just like there are variations in, say, how people perceive color, I do still belive that's really all there is to it, just hallucinations (both sensory and mentally). No matter how in touch one might feel with whatever mystic stuff out there, no matter how profound it might feel, I've yet to see any evidence whatsoever of that somehow proving there effectively is something out there. Doesn't matter those feelings are very real, but it's just.. feelings.
    - leroy-is-here 3y ago
      The science of keeping humans healthy is fairly well researched and can also be explained, but that same science cannot convey the experience of being healthy.
      - eimrine 3y ago
        That leads to the outcome that your statement "The science of keeping humans healthy is fairly well researched" is false. Actually it is the least researched field among the most important, in my humble opinion.
        leroy-is-here 3y ago
        No, it doesn’t. Because the study of health and the being of health are separate topics entirely.
        eimrine 3y ago
        > the study of health and the being of health are separate topics entirely I would rather say that your statements in this particular topic and wise statements per se are separate things entirely and what you have just claimed is not at all.
  - virgildotcodes 3y ago
    I’ve done large amounts of psychedelics and if anything it’s left me feeling more grounded in a materialist worldview. Not that that’s a negative thing at all. The universe is perfect without any need for magic to arbitrarily insert its fingers into the clockwork.
    - mensetmanusman 3y ago
      Do you believe the objects of your thoughts are material?
      - virgildotcodes 3y ago
        Yeah it seems to me the entire process of cognition is based on fully material processes.
        mensetmanusman 3y ago
        Not the process, the plane of existence where the object is. Many who have left Plato’s cave doubt that those objects are made of material.
        rbanffy 3y ago
        Without a definition of what’s material in this context, this discussion makes very little sense. We can’t see objective reality since all we see and sense have to go through our brains. What we can do is to interpret what we see and try to arrive at something that represents a consensus among our different perceptions.
        mensetmanusman 3y ago
        Are you saying the mind is another form of interpretation? Where is that plane of interpretation happening?
        3y ago
  - notnaut 3y ago
    I’ve done plenty of psychedelics. I have no idea why you would imply dreams and near death experiences are in the same boat, and much further than that, why you’d combine them with the concept of an afterlife. The pineal gland isn’t a third eye. Dreams are blatantly not random neurological firings, but have no inherent relation to death or the concept of life after death at all. Near death experiences are similar. The fact that humans have similar experiences when dying is probably not so different from how our behaviors and experiences line up in a multitude of ways, across cultures. You’re the one dismissing hallucinations as simple or unimportant. Understanding them is crucial to understanding human perception and interpretation at large. Pretty much all of what psychedelics taught me is that the human brain is soooo fucking primed to see patterns and make sense from anything. Close your eyes hard enough and put some white noise in your ears and see god now.
    - rapnie 3y ago
      > the human brain is soooo fucking primed to see patterns and make sense from anything. Fully agree. I've never done psychedelics, but years ago when overworked and by lack of sleep my mind went into a severe state of hyperassociativity. Though a serious health danger (feeling as if your brain gets cooked) it was a magnificent experience. Everything I saw with my eyes triggered an explosion of associations. I felt as if I could pierce the mysteries of the universe, perceive the future as it unfolded before me, and was sure that a higher entity existed. Until.. it became too much and I needed treatment and medication to bring me back to earth. The brain is a powerful machine.
      - metroholografx 3y ago
        [dead]
      - meghan_rain 3y ago
        very interesting, do you know the name of this phenomenon? i have experienced something similar, when the brain is munched from overworking and undersleeping, you kind of start "daydreaming", although it might be slightly different than what you have described.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - 1827163 3y ago
    There shouldn't be anything wrong with having an open mind about such phenomena. While it's very likely that they are of biological origin, to immediately dismiss any other possibilities is closed minded dogmatism.
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      It's reasonable to dismiss hypotheses that are untestable, provide no predictive power and have questionable evidence to support them. That's not so much about being close-minded, but just a practical methodology. If you accept non-testable hypotheses, then how can you tell whether it was the result of a specific deity or an invisible pink unicorn?
      - mistermann 3y ago
        How is "provide no predictive power" achieved?
        ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        > How is "provide no predictive power" achieved? It's very similar to being untestable. If a hypothesis provides a prediction, but can alter the interpretation after the event to fit the facts, then it's providing no predictive power. e.g. If someone predicts that <insert deity> rewards/punishes people when they die (which alters their near death experience), but then amends their interpretation of good/bad to fit the data, then it can't be used to predict anything.
        mistermann 3y ago
        > If a hypothesis provides a prediction, but can alter the interpretation after the event to fit the facts, then it's providing no predictive power. e.g. Is this an accurate and comprehensive description of the situation we have before us though? > If someone predicts that <insert deity> rewards/punishes people when they die (which alters their near death experience), but then amends their interpretation of good/bad to fit the data, then it can't be used to predict anything. That you can identify one attribute of this nature is no guarantee that all attributes (which is not known) are of this kind.
  - jrootabega 3y ago
    The overall phenomenon is not random. Our brain is structured, so processes that are not meaningful can produce results that seem meaningful to our brains. Like wind blowing through wind chimes.
    - yarg 3y ago
      I think there are three fundamental aspects to the nature of the death of near death experience. Struggle, acceptance and (what I'm going to call) decay. The first two I believe to be evolved mechanisms, the third whatever fits incidentally within the constraints imposed by the former two. The struggle is obvious, we fight to survive or we do not replicate. I think the acceptance is an aspect that emerges from the constraints applied to social organisms. There is no evolutionary impetus for something that cannot survive to continue with the struggle, but there is the impetus not to harm its relatives in the process. What remains is hallucinatory nonsense born of a failing mind, understanding is lost piece by piece - your conceptual framework perceiving what remains even as it falls apart.
  - wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
    Yeah and the interesting part of it, scientific as we think we are, we don't even try to prove conciousness arises from neurological processes.
    - stevenhuang 3y ago
      Of course we do, you're just not aware of the research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_correlates_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_correlates_of_conscious...
  - nathan_compton 3y ago
    I've done fair amount of psychedelics and all they convinced me of is that people who think the experience is spiritual are credulous.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    perception & reality are interesting can be thought of as overlapping imperfectly, with each having some influence on the other. We observe the world through our senses, which can impact our state of mind. Our state of mind impacts our senses, through which we observe the world. We are always unreliable narrators.
    - runlaszlorun 3y ago
      > perception & reality are interesting can be thought of as overlapping imperfectly, with each having some influence on the other. That’s a good way to put it. Belief systems are fascinating in a way that resists being easily categorized. At least by me. Or such is my belief…
      - steveBK123 3y ago
        Yes. The older I get the more open minded I try to be about these things. I find some of my friends who are the most dogmatically anti-religion or anti-spirtuality, really just replace it with some other tribal thing like politics. There are questions we won't ever have an answer for, and we've been asking the same questions since as long as philosophers could record their writings.
  - p1necone 3y ago
    Given that nobody has found concrete evidence of any phenomena being supernatural ever, defaulting to assuming natural causes seems reasonable to me. If you open your mind too much your brain might fall out.
    - kneebonian 3y ago
      > Given that nobody has found concrete evidence of any phenomena being supernatural ever, I'm going to take issue with this. Anytime we sufficiently understand something it stops becoming supernatural and becomes natural. For a long time lightening, and disease were considered supernatural. To assume there cannot exist things or beings we do not yet understand about the universe simply because we cannot explain it is the height of huburis.
      - p1necone 3y ago
        I don't think "anything we do not understand" is the commonly accepted definition of the word "supernatural". It certainly wasn't the one I was using.
  - kergonath 3y ago
    > However, anyone who has done respectable doses of psychedelics probably agrees with me that there’s a bit more to dreams, NDE and afterlife than “random” neurological firings. On what is this reasoning based? Do you have any idea of what “random neurological firings” can actually do? Particularly considering that you are not in a situation to understand what is happening when your own brain does its thing, so how can you get any certainty out of this? It sounds a lot like the “complex behaviour cannot emerge from an assembly of simple systems” we see regularly, an updated version of the watchmaker fallacy. The truth is, you have no clue. More than that, you cannot have a clue because you are trying to observe something through itself, and the thing in question is behaving in such a peculiar way. That’s why we have things like double blind studies and the scientific method: to try to tease some objective observations out of a complex mess. We don’t understand everything in the brain, far from it. But it’s not magical either. We do understand neurotransmitters, we can look in real time how some patterns change when we eat various substances or do various things.
    - mistermann 3y ago
      > But it’s not magical either. What is the meaning of magical in this context though?
      - kergonath 3y ago
        It’s not something that cannot be understood in terms of neurons sending ions across membranes and electrical potentials.
        mistermann 3y ago
        That would vary greatly on the specific meaning one is using for the term "understood".
  - jasmer 3y ago
    Well 'modern science' aka 'scientific materialism'. Tons of the greatest scientists were religious and therefore not materialists. It's pretty easy to just brush it all aside, but I don't think we should. Also - I suggest you don't need to take acid, but rather just look into your child's eyes to start to fathom something more. I mean, the notion that we are merely blobs of particles randomly bouncing around completely disintegrates pretty much everything we would otherwise believe, I mean, literally the notion of 'intelligence' itself, as such a thing cannot exist out of randomness. Imagine if scientific materialists had to preface every time they said 'life' or 'intelligence' or 'love' or 'creativity' or 'communication' or 'knowledge' with 'supposed life' or 'supposed intelligence' etc. because after all, 'we know none of that exists, neither does consciousness, and we are not having a discussion, we just appear to be having it'. What's funny is a '5th force' that we might crudely refer to as 'Spirit' or whatever that seems to somehow influence matter/energy in some way, is literally and logically a better and more intuitive explanation that 'we are randomness'. And that position would be in many ways much less hypocritical than those walking around professing that they are 'nothing but noise' and yet living every aspect of their lives as though they were not. Random particles cannot have 'rights' folks, so pick a side!
- tboyd47 3y ago
  On the other hand, it's the definition of solipsism to interpret any experience you don't personally share as "hallucinations."
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    I hadn’t considered this before. Brilliant.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  > presumably a sceptic of them being evidence for some kind of afterlife. That would never have occurred to me—my reading of the passage is that these are skeptics of near-death experiences actually occurring near death, rather than later during recovery and becoming connected to the earlier experience. [EDIT] Struck a word that made the tone very slightly confrontational for no reason.
- atlantic 3y ago
  You can only experience the external world through your consciousness. Certain contents of consciousness we assume to have an external correlate, others not, but there is no way to bypass our minds and check directly. Any given civilization has its own picture of reality, and draws its own line separating objective from subjective. We have a fairly conservative model of what is real, due to the influence of the scientific method, but the choice is ultimately arbitrary.
throwmemoney 3y ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-pPBwFFWz_k https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-pPBwFFWz_k Some children can remember exact & verifiable details of their prior life they never could have come to know in this their current child life. These details can be objectively and independently confirmed. Remarkably & quite biologically enigmatic: Some of them have birth marks and birth defects at very same locations as the lethal injury causing their often abrupt and violent past life death. Eg. Born with 5 missing fingers after a prior life accident where they were cut off... Birthmarks at the exact location where they got gunshot wounds in their prior life, which could be confirmed from the autopsy report of their deceased individuality. Furthermore: Some can speak a language they never have learnt in this life (xenoglossy) corresponding to their past life language & nationality. They can in some cases remember names of siblings and other family members in their past life family who they never have met in this life...
- fjfaase 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoglossy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoglossy
- xattt 3y ago
  Is there a source on this that’s not YouTube hearsay?
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  This seems to be arbitrary and completely open to interpretation unless you can predict which child is going to result from a "previous life". e.g. if you see a birthmark, then you can just make up what injury could have "caused" it and go looking for a suitable previous life to link to and thus "explain" it. Also, I don't believe there's been any incidents of xenoglossy that have withstood any detailed examination.
  - supertofu 3y ago
    A scholar monk closely investigated a Sri Lankan case of xenoglossy here: https://audiobuddha.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Rebirth-in-Early-Buddhism-and-Current-Research-Bhikkhu-Analayo.pdf https://audiobuddha.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Rebirth-i...
fjfaase 3y ago
Original scientific paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216268120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216268120
ppmx20 3y ago
It's a final upload to the cloud, with checksum checks...
- andrewclunn 3y ago
  People who die traumatically don't remember the event because their last back-up is a few hours old.
- garganzol 3y ago
  Sounds funny but... I had a near-death experience and this is exactly how it feels - data recollection before departure. The weird thing is that you understand that it's not a totally new feeling - it seems that you are already got familiarized with it some time in the past but just forgot it while you was living your current instance of life.
  - runlaszlorun 3y ago
    I can’t speak to near death experiences but I have been in a couple… for lack of a better term… “pre-death” experiences where for a split moment it’s like you’re experiencing all possible paths and none of them at the same time. Very Schrödinger’s cat / multiversey.
  - alpaca128 3y ago
    I once read of a hypothesis that this is the brain desperately searching memories for a possible solution while its oxygen gets depleted.
    - inglor_cz 3y ago
      I read the same hypothesis, but it does not really square with the observation that soldiers, sailors etc. in life-threatening situations report similar experiences even if they end up physically unhurt.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    Could you elucidate?
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Near-death brain activity and any confirmation of near-death experience does not necessarily imply an afterlife.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  I consider that the best argument against any kind of afterlife is the sheer banality of any claimed conversations with ghosts/deceased. I'd imagine that someone that has taken the final(?) journey would have incredible insights to pass on, yet they always just mumble on about something mundane.
  - tmtvl 3y ago
    Well, you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone, right? Maybe the first thing we start missing is small talk. (Of course, I'm more of a Lisp guy myself)
    - ChicagoBoy11 3y ago
      I wanted you to know I really appreciated the effort you put into that joke. Gave me a nice chuckle this afternoon, and I really needed it!
  - wk_end 3y ago
    Well, that'd be an argument against ghost encounters, not necessarily against "any kind of afterlife". There's plenty of afterlife beliefs that don't involve ghosts at all. Moreover it's assuming that being a ghost would actually impart some incredible insights, or that the behaviour or experience of being a ghost would necessarily reflect that. Most of what I know about ghosts comes from the movie Casper (1995), and in that ghosts are depicted as beings who can't move on from some trauma from their life. Maybe the incredible insights come later, after moving on; maybe the nature of being a ghost necessitates fixation on the "mundane". I'm also not sure (nor am I not not sure) that most accounts of interaction with ghosts would even be described as "mumbling on about something mundane". A Christmas Carol (fictional) depicts ghosts as providing life-changing spiritual guidance, for instance. The best - and only - argument we have against belief in any kind of afterlife is that we have no actual evidence for one. The very idea lies outside of our capacity to know.
gjadi 3y ago
Is this the beginning of the Thanatonautes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Thanatonautes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Thanatonautes
- rapnie 3y ago
  Or maybe just the beginning of Flatliners? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatliners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatliners
  - ne8il 3y ago
    Or the ending of Brainstorm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorm_(1983_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorm_(1983_film)
unsupp0rted 3y ago
Next up: colon activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences That's what happens when a system designed to fire impulses on a good day is dying on a bad day.
- ComplexSystems 3y ago
  Yes, and thus it makes perfect sense that this system, firing impulses associated with consciousness, causes people to have near-death experiences.
- euroderf 3y ago
  If it helps the discussion, I've had some near-death colonic experiences.
moremetadata 3y ago
[dead]
11235813213455 3y ago
In the cases of natural deaths, I think it's something you decide, or rather you give up, and shortly after the whole body turns off. I was with my mother with a strong cancer, she didn't want to go to hospital but her situation got really bad so we ended up carrying her to hospital, she died shortly after entering in the hospital despite all their systems (transfusions) set up
C-x_C-f 3y ago
If there's one hill I'm determined to die on (given the information that I have anyway) is that any scientific finding extrapolating information from "brain waves" or "region activation" is little more than modern day phrenology. Of course this is not an original thought, though I find it alarming that it's the minority opinion seeing as EEG/fMRI augury suffers from blatant methodological and even statistical flaws. There are too many sources to list but I think [0] has a good and varied collection of what I consider to be statistically informed thoughts on "cognition" research, see e.g. [1] [2] for a gentle introduction. (I should like to point out that I recognize the usefulness of brain measurements in medical contexts; I'm just saying that using them to say anything about non-pathological perception or metaphysics has so far been fantastically unsuccessful.) [0] http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_cognition.html http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_cognition.html [1] http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2017-08.html#neuromania http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2017-08.html#neuromania [2] https://www.powells.com/book/neuromania-9780199591343 https://www.powells.com/book/neuromania-9780199591343
- mike_d 3y ago
  What you are experiencing is being present for the development of a major leap in technology. You'll see a lot of trial and error and near misses until someone cracks the big breakthrough of how we non-invasively read information in bulk from a mind. Have a look at all the historical cynicism that surrounded things like voice tracks in motion pictures or consumer automobiles.
  - C-x_C-f 3y ago
    I don't deny that neuroscientists will discover something big in the future; I'm just saying that people should stop expecting that the next breakthrough will come from crude tools such as EEGs and fMRI, at least in conjunction with present-day computational power and statistical sophistication. These tools are useful enough without assigning an aura of metaphysical power to them; as things stand, billions of dollars are being wasted on adding noise, and what's worse is that the field has a track record of nefarious applications[0]. You could argue that the latter are not the scientists' fault, but if we keep promoting grandstanding pseudoscience for no clear reason, it's only a matter of time before somebody with both power and ill will is going to use it to harm people, all the while purporting to act in the name of "science." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology#Racism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology#Racism
supertofu 3y ago
The filter theory* of consciousness holds that consciousness is an element independent of the human brain. Every brain acts as a unique filter for this elemental consciousness, structuring reality in the most optimal way for that creature to survive. This filtered consciousness forms the "default mode network", which is the construction of ego or separate self. Near death experiences (and psychedelics and Buddhist jhanas) disintegrate the default mode network, allowing us to perceive the consciousness element beyond the brain's filtering mechanism. *vs commonly held production theory which assumes the brain produces consciousness.
- akomtu 3y ago
  It's an interesting idea. When someone plays chess with himself, he creates two filters that represent the two imaginary players.
Moneyyyyy 3y ago
Why do we clinge on this type of ideas? It's an EEG not a super high resolution device. Yes our brain does stuff at the edge of breaking. EEG changes somehow when we put ourself under anesthesia . Still we don't really get it. And weirdly enough comments here go into afterlife and other esoteric stuff. We know enough about our brain that we know we are our brain...
- akomtu 3y ago
  We've just discovered that most of the world is made of "dark" matter of unknown origin. Clearly, what we know is just a thin layer of reality. And even about this thin layer we know very little.
  - Moneyyyyy 3y ago
    Yes there are clearly real magic questions like why are we, where are we etc but not if we have a soul
    - akomtu 3y ago
      We can't even define what intelligence is, and soul is a much subtler matter.
      - Moneyyyyy 3y ago
        The idea of a soul independent of our body is fantasy and not based on anything. We know that you can't survive without a brain. We know that your personality changes if your brain gets damaged. It's very far fetched to talk about soul as anything else than just fantasy.
bell-cot 3y ago
Between having surreal dreams occasionally after merely a late-night dark chocolate snack, and some bizarre errors I've seen from computers with failing power supplies...zero "near-death experience" reports actually seem credible to me. ("Credible" in the supernatural / theological sense. However real an occasional dream of levitating myself feels...after waking up, that pesky "gravity" stuff is again ON, with the cool "off" option grayed out.)
reuben_scratton 3y ago
When my mother died she had been completely unconscious for a whole week, but just 30 minutes before she died she opened her eyes and looked around the room. I was later told by a nurse that this is quite common when people are about to die. It seems to fit with the notion of one last burst of brain activity.
- sakopov 3y ago
  People also inexplicably get better for a few days/weeks before they die. This happened with my grandfather who died of cancer and my great-grandmother who died of sepsis.
- sethammons 3y ago
  "A candle flickers most violently right before it goes out."
andrewflnr 3y ago
The digression into mysticism in this thread is weird. Finding a physical correlate of NDEs reinforces the materialist view, which is basically the null hypothesis for "sceptics". Everyone who didn't already believe in an immaterial soul can calm down.
- akomtu 3y ago
  What is "materiality"? Electrons guided by magnetic field that form one universal wave function? In that case even the hardcore materialists are fundamentally in agreement with mysticism.
  - andrewflnr 3y ago
    No they aren't, despite the superficial similarity, and I think you know it. At best you haven't actually thought about the difference between a measurable field defined by math and a mystical "field" ultimately defined by feelings.
    - akomtu 3y ago
      "Mysticism" is a belief that everything and everyone are different manifestations of the one (law, origin, something that's beyond words and imagination). Science is a belief that there is one universal law of nature and that everything is its different manifestations.
      - andrewflnr 3y ago
        > superficial similarity
        akomtu 3y ago
        >|<
wessorh 3y ago
Having recently recovered from Legionnaires where I was in a medically induced coma for nearly 2 months where I received CPR twice for flat-lining here is my experience... I didn't know what happened but I did get to meet deities, aliens and participate in a bunch of sci-fi oriented excursions. In short I learned about where the mind goes under a lot of drugs and I appreciate the experience. It was easier to remember and clearer than dreams. As to the bright light -- I thought it was nuclear war :) It a long "bad trip" but recovering well, thanks to a great community of concerned friends and healers.
- Jeff_Brown 3y ago
  I had open heart surgery once, and was given a lot of drugs. It was extremely intense and strange, and I felt like I was at the edge of discovering something immensely important. In retrospect I believe I learned nothing.
  - CSSer 3y ago
    It sounds like it was a really heartfelt experience.
    - Jeff_Brown 3y ago
      I certainly felt it.
      - CSSer 3y ago
        I'm sorry, I had to. Re-reading your response though, there's something unclear to me. What part was intense and strange? Wouldn't it just be like going under and then waking up? Was there a sensation of going in and out as they performed surgery?
        Jeff_Brown 3y ago
        I remember nothing of surgery itself, but for weeks after that I was on Vicodin and half-crazy. I remember a dream that felt like I had spent a hundred years on a submarine, with almost no input but the ping of a radar. I remember being mostly unable to participate in a Skype conversation my visiting parents had had with some friends from fifteen years ago, putting my head down, and seeing that everyone was in fact a tiny ship on a great expanding sea, getting farther and farther from each other, ala the big bang. I remember identifying with a pinball in a two-dimensional pinballish world -- somehow my sense of self was inside that world but my perception of it was from outside in the z-direction looking at it -- and the certainty that that pinball had to eventually get flushed down a certain exit pipe, and yet it never seemed to. Everything felt pregnant with metaphor for everything else -- the bed was school, a book was traffic, speech was rain. It all sounds trippy and enjoyable to me as I write it now, but really, it sucked.
pbj1968 3y ago
We will all find out soon enough. Speculating on this is a waste of time.
proc0 3y ago
> Sam Parnia at NYU Langone Health says the gamma wave surge might happen as people die because falling oxygen levels disable some natural “braking systems” on brain activity. Woah, they should study this in context of the practice of meditating and fire breathing (hyperventilating?). A popular one is Wim Hoff who has this method where you increase O2 in the blood by breathing techniques and then hold your breath for as long as possible.
niknoble 3y ago
One of the things that struck me when I took LSD for the first time is that pop culture gets a surprising amount right about going insane. There were aspects of the experience that felt familiar from TV shows and movies. In hindsight, it makes sense: the people who create those depictions are doing their best to capture the real thing, and not just making up stories that sound cool. Similarly, I think a lot of skeptics will be surprised when they're dying and realize that the pop culture tropes are fairly accurate. Memories being replayed in vivid detail, a light at the end of a tunnel, etc. Where do you think these ideas are coming from if not first-hand experience?

168 points by RafelMri 3y ago

> The sensation of moving down a tunnel towards a bright light, reliving past memories and hearing or seeing deceased relatives have all been reported by people from many cultures who have had a brush with death. Sceptics, however, say these experiences could be caused by people hallucinating as they recover in hospital. The way that the default is presented here is interesting. Interpreting the experiences as hallucinations makes you a "sceptic" - presumably a sceptic of them being evidence for some kind of afterlife. Whether or not brain activity records of dying people are available, treating these subjective experiences as anything other than naturalistic in origin seems bizarre to me.

spacephysics 3y ago
Unfortunately many things in western culture that get close to mysticism are disregarded as hallucinations or random neurological firings. Same goes with dreams and such. It’s the ‘religion of science’ defaulting to the ‘god’ of deconstructionism. Just hallucinations, nothing more. I understand why, there’s certainly many things which were once said to be mystic, but ended up less so. However, anyone who has done respectable doses of psychedelics probably agrees with me that there’s a bit more to dreams, NDE and afterlife than “random” neurological firings.
- leroy-is-here 3y ago
  I don’t understand the why anymore. More than 2000 years ago, we understood that we must be a sum of parts and that kind of idea yielded the atom. We applied the atom to many kinds of structures to discern their nature. Now, atom means some scientific particle. We simply have more things to name, but still constantly run into things we cannot name yet. We think this will end but it will not. If our universe is ever expanding, how can it?
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    > We think this will end but it will not. If our universe is ever expanding, how can it? Heat death of the universe?
  - ajuc 3y ago
    > still constantly run into things we cannot name yet. Humanity has the opposite problem - we invent names for things that don't exist. We have no idea what dark matter is, but we have a name handy just in case. Same with gods, elves, dragons, aliens, etc. I can't find one example of people not being able to name something that exist. Worst case just name it "phenomenon X" where X is the first unused integer. I can find lots of examples of people naming things that don't exist. See phlogiston and ether for example, if you don't like fantasy and religion.
    - leroy-is-here 3y ago
      I think we have both problems, actually. We definitely have names that are good, like New York, Justice, Earth, Peace, Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker. But we also have names of things which are bad, because they are false. These the are names which are you talking about.
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      > I can't find one example of people not being able to name something that exist How about "The smallest positive integer not definable in under sixty letters"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry_paradox
- danbruc 3y ago
  However, anyone who has done respectable doses of psychedelics probably agrees with me that there’s a bit more to dreams, NDE and afterlife than “random” neurological firings. Why would that be the case? If anything, it seems to me, taking psychedelics will teach you that tiny amounts of chemicals can drastically alter how your brain works, especially how it perceives the world.
  - leroy-is-here 3y ago
    If tiny chemicals can do that to you, because you ingested them, what about all of the other things you ingest, including sound, which cause chemicals in your brain to make reactions?
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      Sounds do have a strong effect on people's emotions, but they don't tend to affect the way in which you think (maybe emotionally) in the same way that psychedelics can do.
      - leroy-is-here 3y ago
        Words, transmitted by sound _absolutely_, without a single doubt, can affect the thoughts of an individual. And, of course, horns and loud sounds and noises will also affect the thoughts.
        ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        Those affect your thoughts, but don't really change the manner in which you think to the same degree that psychedelics do. I'd grant some exceptions such as a zen student receiving a lesson/koan that drastically changes their thought processes, but I'd argue that the change was already within them and the sound was just the catalyst - the same lesson/koan is unlikely to have similar effects on other people, and certainly not without the recipient having spent time studying that religion/philosophy.
- eimrine 3y ago
  > However, anyone who has done respectable doses of psychedelics probably agrees with me that there’s a bit more to dreams, NDE and afterlife than “random” neurological firings. Maybe anyone except of me. I am really comfortable when hallucinations are called as hallucinations despite of does they have any esoteric sense or not. All esoteric understanding of hallucination are really better to keep distance from science before some study will give a ground to consider more. You must distinguish known things from unknown things unless you are comfortable to be a not wise person.
- rapnie 3y ago
  > Just hallucinations, nothing more. [..] “random” neurological firings. With 'just' and 'random' you are in a similar way derogatory to the 'religion of science' in favor of mysticism. If in a healthy and awake state it is our brains that model the full brunt of reality we perceive (an assumption, may be 'mysticism' involved here), then these hallucinations may be just as real seeming to a person, though not based on usual sensory input. Maybe based on past experience, memories. Maybe unconsciously collected until 're-lived' in the hallucination.
- stinos 3y ago
  I don't agree there's more to it than random firings, but only in the sense they aren't quite random at all. For the rest I do still think there's nothing more to it than that. The biochemistry behind psychedelics is fairly well-researched and can be explained, so while there is a random component to it just like there are variations in, say, how people perceive color, I do still belive that's really all there is to it, just hallucinations (both sensory and mentally). No matter how in touch one might feel with whatever mystic stuff out there, no matter how profound it might feel, I've yet to see any evidence whatsoever of that somehow proving there effectively is something out there. Doesn't matter those feelings are very real, but it's just.. feelings.
  - leroy-is-here 3y ago
    The science of keeping humans healthy is fairly well researched and can also be explained, but that same science cannot convey the experience of being healthy.
    - eimrine 3y ago
      That leads to the outcome that your statement "The science of keeping humans healthy is fairly well researched" is false. Actually it is the least researched field among the most important, in my humble opinion.
      - leroy-is-here 3y ago
        No, it doesn’t. Because the study of health and the being of health are separate topics entirely.
        eimrine 3y ago
        > the study of health and the being of health are separate topics entirely I would rather say that your statements in this particular topic and wise statements per se are separate things entirely and what you have just claimed is not at all.
- virgildotcodes 3y ago
  I’ve done large amounts of psychedelics and if anything it’s left me feeling more grounded in a materialist worldview. Not that that’s a negative thing at all. The universe is perfect without any need for magic to arbitrarily insert its fingers into the clockwork.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    Do you believe the objects of your thoughts are material?
    - virgildotcodes 3y ago
      Yeah it seems to me the entire process of cognition is based on fully material processes.
      - mensetmanusman 3y ago
        Not the process, the plane of existence where the object is. Many who have left Plato’s cave doubt that those objects are made of material.
        rbanffy 3y ago
        Without a definition of what’s material in this context, this discussion makes very little sense. We can’t see objective reality since all we see and sense have to go through our brains. What we can do is to interpret what we see and try to arrive at something that represents a consensus among our different perceptions.
        mensetmanusman 3y ago
        Are you saying the mind is another form of interpretation? Where is that plane of interpretation happening?
        3y ago
- notnaut 3y ago
  I’ve done plenty of psychedelics. I have no idea why you would imply dreams and near death experiences are in the same boat, and much further than that, why you’d combine them with the concept of an afterlife. The pineal gland isn’t a third eye. Dreams are blatantly not random neurological firings, but have no inherent relation to death or the concept of life after death at all. Near death experiences are similar. The fact that humans have similar experiences when dying is probably not so different from how our behaviors and experiences line up in a multitude of ways, across cultures. You’re the one dismissing hallucinations as simple or unimportant. Understanding them is crucial to understanding human perception and interpretation at large. Pretty much all of what psychedelics taught me is that the human brain is soooo fucking primed to see patterns and make sense from anything. Close your eyes hard enough and put some white noise in your ears and see god now.
  - rapnie 3y ago
    > the human brain is soooo fucking primed to see patterns and make sense from anything. Fully agree. I've never done psychedelics, but years ago when overworked and by lack of sleep my mind went into a severe state of hyperassociativity. Though a serious health danger (feeling as if your brain gets cooked) it was a magnificent experience. Everything I saw with my eyes triggered an explosion of associations. I felt as if I could pierce the mysteries of the universe, perceive the future as it unfolded before me, and was sure that a higher entity existed. Until.. it became too much and I needed treatment and medication to bring me back to earth. The brain is a powerful machine.
    - metroholografx 3y ago
      [dead]
    - meghan_rain 3y ago
      very interesting, do you know the name of this phenomenon? i have experienced something similar, when the brain is munched from overworking and undersleeping, you kind of start "daydreaming", although it might be slightly different than what you have described.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 1827163 3y ago
  There shouldn't be anything wrong with having an open mind about such phenomena. While it's very likely that they are of biological origin, to immediately dismiss any other possibilities is closed minded dogmatism.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    It's reasonable to dismiss hypotheses that are untestable, provide no predictive power and have questionable evidence to support them. That's not so much about being close-minded, but just a practical methodology. If you accept non-testable hypotheses, then how can you tell whether it was the result of a specific deity or an invisible pink unicorn?
    - mistermann 3y ago
      How is "provide no predictive power" achieved?
      - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        > How is "provide no predictive power" achieved? It's very similar to being untestable. If a hypothesis provides a prediction, but can alter the interpretation after the event to fit the facts, then it's providing no predictive power. e.g. If someone predicts that <insert deity> rewards/punishes people when they die (which alters their near death experience), but then amends their interpretation of good/bad to fit the data, then it can't be used to predict anything.
        mistermann 3y ago
        > If a hypothesis provides a prediction, but can alter the interpretation after the event to fit the facts, then it's providing no predictive power. e.g. Is this an accurate and comprehensive description of the situation we have before us though? > If someone predicts that <insert deity> rewards/punishes people when they die (which alters their near death experience), but then amends their interpretation of good/bad to fit the data, then it can't be used to predict anything. That you can identify one attribute of this nature is no guarantee that all attributes (which is not known) are of this kind.
- jrootabega 3y ago
  The overall phenomenon is not random. Our brain is structured, so processes that are not meaningful can produce results that seem meaningful to our brains. Like wind blowing through wind chimes.
  - yarg 3y ago
    I think there are three fundamental aspects to the nature of the death of near death experience. Struggle, acceptance and (what I'm going to call) decay. The first two I believe to be evolved mechanisms, the third whatever fits incidentally within the constraints imposed by the former two. The struggle is obvious, we fight to survive or we do not replicate. I think the acceptance is an aspect that emerges from the constraints applied to social organisms. There is no evolutionary impetus for something that cannot survive to continue with the struggle, but there is the impetus not to harm its relatives in the process. What remains is hallucinatory nonsense born of a failing mind, understanding is lost piece by piece - your conceptual framework perceiving what remains even as it falls apart.
- wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
  Yeah and the interesting part of it, scientific as we think we are, we don't even try to prove conciousness arises from neurological processes.
  - stevenhuang 3y ago
    Of course we do, you're just not aware of the research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_correlates_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_correlates_of_conscious...
- nathan_compton 3y ago
  I've done fair amount of psychedelics and all they convinced me of is that people who think the experience is spiritual are credulous.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  perception & reality are interesting can be thought of as overlapping imperfectly, with each having some influence on the other. We observe the world through our senses, which can impact our state of mind. Our state of mind impacts our senses, through which we observe the world. We are always unreliable narrators.
  - runlaszlorun 3y ago
    > perception & reality are interesting can be thought of as overlapping imperfectly, with each having some influence on the other. That’s a good way to put it. Belief systems are fascinating in a way that resists being easily categorized. At least by me. Or such is my belief…
    - steveBK123 3y ago
      Yes. The older I get the more open minded I try to be about these things. I find some of my friends who are the most dogmatically anti-religion or anti-spirtuality, really just replace it with some other tribal thing like politics. There are questions we won't ever have an answer for, and we've been asking the same questions since as long as philosophers could record their writings.
- p1necone 3y ago
  Given that nobody has found concrete evidence of any phenomena being supernatural ever, defaulting to assuming natural causes seems reasonable to me. If you open your mind too much your brain might fall out.
  - kneebonian 3y ago
    > Given that nobody has found concrete evidence of any phenomena being supernatural ever, I'm going to take issue with this. Anytime we sufficiently understand something it stops becoming supernatural and becomes natural. For a long time lightening, and disease were considered supernatural. To assume there cannot exist things or beings we do not yet understand about the universe simply because we cannot explain it is the height of huburis.
    - p1necone 3y ago
      I don't think "anything we do not understand" is the commonly accepted definition of the word "supernatural". It certainly wasn't the one I was using.
- kergonath 3y ago
  > However, anyone who has done respectable doses of psychedelics probably agrees with me that there’s a bit more to dreams, NDE and afterlife than “random” neurological firings. On what is this reasoning based? Do you have any idea of what “random neurological firings” can actually do? Particularly considering that you are not in a situation to understand what is happening when your own brain does its thing, so how can you get any certainty out of this? It sounds a lot like the “complex behaviour cannot emerge from an assembly of simple systems” we see regularly, an updated version of the watchmaker fallacy. The truth is, you have no clue. More than that, you cannot have a clue because you are trying to observe something through itself, and the thing in question is behaving in such a peculiar way. That’s why we have things like double blind studies and the scientific method: to try to tease some objective observations out of a complex mess. We don’t understand everything in the brain, far from it. But it’s not magical either. We do understand neurotransmitters, we can look in real time how some patterns change when we eat various substances or do various things.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    > But it’s not magical either. What is the meaning of magical in this context though?
    - kergonath 3y ago
      It’s not something that cannot be understood in terms of neurons sending ions across membranes and electrical potentials.
      - mistermann 3y ago
        That would vary greatly on the specific meaning one is using for the term "understood".
- jasmer 3y ago
  Well 'modern science' aka 'scientific materialism'. Tons of the greatest scientists were religious and therefore not materialists. It's pretty easy to just brush it all aside, but I don't think we should. Also - I suggest you don't need to take acid, but rather just look into your child's eyes to start to fathom something more. I mean, the notion that we are merely blobs of particles randomly bouncing around completely disintegrates pretty much everything we would otherwise believe, I mean, literally the notion of 'intelligence' itself, as such a thing cannot exist out of randomness. Imagine if scientific materialists had to preface every time they said 'life' or 'intelligence' or 'love' or 'creativity' or 'communication' or 'knowledge' with 'supposed life' or 'supposed intelligence' etc. because after all, 'we know none of that exists, neither does consciousness, and we are not having a discussion, we just appear to be having it'. What's funny is a '5th force' that we might crudely refer to as 'Spirit' or whatever that seems to somehow influence matter/energy in some way, is literally and logically a better and more intuitive explanation that 'we are randomness'. And that position would be in many ways much less hypocritical than those walking around professing that they are 'nothing but noise' and yet living every aspect of their lives as though they were not. Random particles cannot have 'rights' folks, so pick a side!
tboyd47 3y ago
On the other hand, it's the definition of solipsism to interpret any experience you don't personally share as "hallucinations."
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  I hadn’t considered this before. Brilliant.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
yamtaddle 3y ago
> presumably a sceptic of them being evidence for some kind of afterlife. That would never have occurred to me—my reading of the passage is that these are skeptics of near-death experiences actually occurring near death, rather than later during recovery and becoming connected to the earlier experience. [EDIT] Struck a word that made the tone very slightly confrontational for no reason.
atlantic 3y ago
You can only experience the external world through your consciousness. Certain contents of consciousness we assume to have an external correlate, others not, but there is no way to bypass our minds and check directly. Any given civilization has its own picture of reality, and draws its own line separating objective from subjective. We have a fairly conservative model of what is real, due to the influence of the scientific method, but the choice is ultimately arbitrary.

throwmemoney 3y ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-pPBwFFWz_k https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-pPBwFFWz_k Some children can remember exact & verifiable details of their prior life they never could have come to know in this their current child life. These details can be objectively and independently confirmed. Remarkably & quite biologically enigmatic: Some of them have birth marks and birth defects at very same locations as the lethal injury causing their often abrupt and violent past life death. Eg. Born with 5 missing fingers after a prior life accident where they were cut off... Birthmarks at the exact location where they got gunshot wounds in their prior life, which could be confirmed from the autopsy report of their deceased individuality. Furthermore: Some can speak a language they never have learnt in this life (xenoglossy) corresponding to their past life language & nationality. They can in some cases remember names of siblings and other family members in their past life family who they never have met in this life...

fjfaase 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoglossy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoglossy
xattt 3y ago
Is there a source on this that’s not YouTube hearsay?
ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
This seems to be arbitrary and completely open to interpretation unless you can predict which child is going to result from a "previous life". e.g. if you see a birthmark, then you can just make up what injury could have "caused" it and go looking for a suitable previous life to link to and thus "explain" it. Also, I don't believe there's been any incidents of xenoglossy that have withstood any detailed examination.
- supertofu 3y ago
  A scholar monk closely investigated a Sri Lankan case of xenoglossy here: https://audiobuddha.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Rebirth-in-Early-Buddhism-and-Current-Research-Bhikkhu-Analayo.pdf https://audiobuddha.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Rebirth-i...

fjfaase 3y ago

Original scientific paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216268120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216268120

ppmx20 3y ago

It's a final upload to the cloud, with checksum checks...

andrewclunn 3y ago
People who die traumatically don't remember the event because their last back-up is a few hours old.
garganzol 3y ago
Sounds funny but... I had a near-death experience and this is exactly how it feels - data recollection before departure. The weird thing is that you understand that it's not a totally new feeling - it seems that you are already got familiarized with it some time in the past but just forgot it while you was living your current instance of life.
- runlaszlorun 3y ago
  I can’t speak to near death experiences but I have been in a couple… for lack of a better term… “pre-death” experiences where for a split moment it’s like you’re experiencing all possible paths and none of them at the same time. Very Schrödinger’s cat / multiversey.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  I once read of a hypothesis that this is the brain desperately searching memories for a possible solution while its oxygen gets depleted.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    I read the same hypothesis, but it does not really square with the observation that soldiers, sailors etc. in life-threatening situations report similar experiences even if they end up physically unhurt.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Could you elucidate?

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

Near-death brain activity and any confirmation of near-death experience does not necessarily imply an afterlife.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
I consider that the best argument against any kind of afterlife is the sheer banality of any claimed conversations with ghosts/deceased. I'd imagine that someone that has taken the final(?) journey would have incredible insights to pass on, yet they always just mumble on about something mundane.
- tmtvl 3y ago
  Well, you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone, right? Maybe the first thing we start missing is small talk. (Of course, I'm more of a Lisp guy myself)
  - ChicagoBoy11 3y ago
    I wanted you to know I really appreciated the effort you put into that joke. Gave me a nice chuckle this afternoon, and I really needed it!
- wk_end 3y ago
  Well, that'd be an argument against ghost encounters, not necessarily against "any kind of afterlife". There's plenty of afterlife beliefs that don't involve ghosts at all. Moreover it's assuming that being a ghost would actually impart some incredible insights, or that the behaviour or experience of being a ghost would necessarily reflect that. Most of what I know about ghosts comes from the movie Casper (1995), and in that ghosts are depicted as beings who can't move on from some trauma from their life. Maybe the incredible insights come later, after moving on; maybe the nature of being a ghost necessitates fixation on the "mundane". I'm also not sure (nor am I not not sure) that most accounts of interaction with ghosts would even be described as "mumbling on about something mundane". A Christmas Carol (fictional) depicts ghosts as providing life-changing spiritual guidance, for instance. The best - and only - argument we have against belief in any kind of afterlife is that we have no actual evidence for one. The very idea lies outside of our capacity to know.

gjadi 3y ago

Is this the beginning of the Thanatonautes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Thanatonautes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Thanatonautes

rapnie 3y ago
Or maybe just the beginning of Flatliners? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatliners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatliners
- ne8il 3y ago
  Or the ending of Brainstorm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorm_(1983_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorm_(1983_film)

unsupp0rted 3y ago

Next up: colon activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences That's what happens when a system designed to fire impulses on a good day is dying on a bad day.

ComplexSystems 3y ago
Yes, and thus it makes perfect sense that this system, firing impulses associated with consciousness, causes people to have near-death experiences.
euroderf 3y ago
If it helps the discussion, I've had some near-death colonic experiences.

moremetadata 3y ago

[dead]

11235813213455 3y ago

In the cases of natural deaths, I think it's something you decide, or rather you give up, and shortly after the whole body turns off. I was with my mother with a strong cancer, she didn't want to go to hospital but her situation got really bad so we ended up carrying her to hospital, she died shortly after entering in the hospital despite all their systems (transfusions) set up

C-x_C-f 3y ago

If there's one hill I'm determined to die on (given the information that I have anyway) is that any scientific finding extrapolating information from "brain waves" or "region activation" is little more than modern day phrenology. Of course this is not an original thought, though I find it alarming that it's the minority opinion seeing as EEG/fMRI augury suffers from blatant methodological and even statistical flaws. There are too many sources to list but I think [0] has a good and varied collection of what I consider to be statistically informed thoughts on "cognition" research, see e.g. [1] [2] for a gentle introduction. (I should like to point out that I recognize the usefulness of brain measurements in medical contexts; I'm just saying that using them to say anything about non-pathological perception or metaphysics has so far been fantastically unsuccessful.) [0] http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_cognition.html http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_cognition.html [1] http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2017-08.html#neuromania http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2017-08.html#neuromania [2] https://www.powells.com/book/neuromania-9780199591343 https://www.powells.com/book/neuromania-9780199591343

mike_d 3y ago
What you are experiencing is being present for the development of a major leap in technology. You'll see a lot of trial and error and near misses until someone cracks the big breakthrough of how we non-invasively read information in bulk from a mind. Have a look at all the historical cynicism that surrounded things like voice tracks in motion pictures or consumer automobiles.
- C-x_C-f 3y ago
  I don't deny that neuroscientists will discover something big in the future; I'm just saying that people should stop expecting that the next breakthrough will come from crude tools such as EEGs and fMRI, at least in conjunction with present-day computational power and statistical sophistication. These tools are useful enough without assigning an aura of metaphysical power to them; as things stand, billions of dollars are being wasted on adding noise, and what's worse is that the field has a track record of nefarious applications[0]. You could argue that the latter are not the scientists' fault, but if we keep promoting grandstanding pseudoscience for no clear reason, it's only a matter of time before somebody with both power and ill will is going to use it to harm people, all the while purporting to act in the name of "science." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology#Racism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology#Racism

supertofu 3y ago

The filter theory* of consciousness holds that consciousness is an element independent of the human brain. Every brain acts as a unique filter for this elemental consciousness, structuring reality in the most optimal way for that creature to survive. This filtered consciousness forms the "default mode network", which is the construction of ego or separate self. Near death experiences (and psychedelics and Buddhist jhanas) disintegrate the default mode network, allowing us to perceive the consciousness element beyond the brain's filtering mechanism. *vs commonly held production theory which assumes the brain produces consciousness.

akomtu 3y ago
It's an interesting idea. When someone plays chess with himself, he creates two filters that represent the two imaginary players.

Moneyyyyy 3y ago

Why do we clinge on this type of ideas? It's an EEG not a super high resolution device. Yes our brain does stuff at the edge of breaking. EEG changes somehow when we put ourself under anesthesia . Still we don't really get it. And weirdly enough comments here go into afterlife and other esoteric stuff. We know enough about our brain that we know we are our brain...

akomtu 3y ago
We've just discovered that most of the world is made of "dark" matter of unknown origin. Clearly, what we know is just a thin layer of reality. And even about this thin layer we know very little.
- Moneyyyyy 3y ago
  Yes there are clearly real magic questions like why are we, where are we etc but not if we have a soul
  - akomtu 3y ago
    We can't even define what intelligence is, and soul is a much subtler matter.
    - Moneyyyyy 3y ago
      The idea of a soul independent of our body is fantasy and not based on anything. We know that you can't survive without a brain. We know that your personality changes if your brain gets damaged. It's very far fetched to talk about soul as anything else than just fantasy.

bell-cot 3y ago

Between having surreal dreams occasionally after merely a late-night dark chocolate snack, and some bizarre errors I've seen from computers with failing power supplies...zero "near-death experience" reports actually seem credible to me. ("Credible" in the supernatural / theological sense. However real an occasional dream of levitating myself feels...after waking up, that pesky "gravity" stuff is again ON, with the cool "off" option grayed out.)

reuben_scratton 3y ago

When my mother died she had been completely unconscious for a whole week, but just 30 minutes before she died she opened her eyes and looked around the room. I was later told by a nurse that this is quite common when people are about to die. It seems to fit with the notion of one last burst of brain activity.

sakopov 3y ago
People also inexplicably get better for a few days/weeks before they die. This happened with my grandfather who died of cancer and my great-grandmother who died of sepsis.
sethammons 3y ago
"A candle flickers most violently right before it goes out."

andrewflnr 3y ago

The digression into mysticism in this thread is weird. Finding a physical correlate of NDEs reinforces the materialist view, which is basically the null hypothesis for "sceptics". Everyone who didn't already believe in an immaterial soul can calm down.

akomtu 3y ago
What is "materiality"? Electrons guided by magnetic field that form one universal wave function? In that case even the hardcore materialists are fundamentally in agreement with mysticism.
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  No they aren't, despite the superficial similarity, and I think you know it. At best you haven't actually thought about the difference between a measurable field defined by math and a mystical "field" ultimately defined by feelings.
  - akomtu 3y ago
    "Mysticism" is a belief that everything and everyone are different manifestations of the one (law, origin, something that's beyond words and imagination). Science is a belief that there is one universal law of nature and that everything is its different manifestations.
    - andrewflnr 3y ago
      > superficial similarity
      - akomtu 3y ago
        >|<

wessorh 3y ago

Having recently recovered from Legionnaires where I was in a medically induced coma for nearly 2 months where I received CPR twice for flat-lining here is my experience... I didn't know what happened but I did get to meet deities, aliens and participate in a bunch of sci-fi oriented excursions. In short I learned about where the mind goes under a lot of drugs and I appreciate the experience. It was easier to remember and clearer than dreams. As to the bright light -- I thought it was nuclear war :) It a long "bad trip" but recovering well, thanks to a great community of concerned friends and healers.

Jeff_Brown 3y ago
I had open heart surgery once, and was given a lot of drugs. It was extremely intense and strange, and I felt like I was at the edge of discovering something immensely important. In retrospect I believe I learned nothing.
- CSSer 3y ago
  It sounds like it was a really heartfelt experience.
  - Jeff_Brown 3y ago
    I certainly felt it.
    - CSSer 3y ago
      I'm sorry, I had to. Re-reading your response though, there's something unclear to me. What part was intense and strange? Wouldn't it just be like going under and then waking up? Was there a sensation of going in and out as they performed surgery?
      - Jeff_Brown 3y ago
        I remember nothing of surgery itself, but for weeks after that I was on Vicodin and half-crazy. I remember a dream that felt like I had spent a hundred years on a submarine, with almost no input but the ping of a radar. I remember being mostly unable to participate in a Skype conversation my visiting parents had had with some friends from fifteen years ago, putting my head down, and seeing that everyone was in fact a tiny ship on a great expanding sea, getting farther and farther from each other, ala the big bang. I remember identifying with a pinball in a two-dimensional pinballish world -- somehow my sense of self was inside that world but my perception of it was from outside in the z-direction looking at it -- and the certainty that that pinball had to eventually get flushed down a certain exit pipe, and yet it never seemed to. Everything felt pregnant with metaphor for everything else -- the bed was school, a book was traffic, speech was rain. It all sounds trippy and enjoyable to me as I write it now, but really, it sucked.

pbj1968 3y ago

We will all find out soon enough. Speculating on this is a waste of time.

proc0 3y ago

> Sam Parnia at NYU Langone Health says the gamma wave surge might happen as people die because falling oxygen levels disable some natural “braking systems” on brain activity. Woah, they should study this in context of the practice of meditating and fire breathing (hyperventilating?). A popular one is Wim Hoff who has this method where you increase O2 in the blood by breathing techniques and then hold your breath for as long as possible.

niknoble 3y ago

One of the things that struck me when I took LSD for the first time is that pop culture gets a surprising amount right about going insane. There were aspects of the experience that felt familiar from TV shows and movies. In hindsight, it makes sense: the people who create those depictions are doing their best to capture the real thing, and not just making up stories that sound cool. Similarly, I think a lot of skeptics will be surprised when they're dying and realize that the pop culture tropes are fairly accurate. Memories being replayed in vivid detail, a light at the end of a tunnel, etc. Where do you think these ideas are coming from if not first-hand experience?