4 ms·

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

ndsipa_pomu 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
- bloak 4y ago
  Of course there are also stories of people who claim to have left their body and seen the operating theatre from above and to have noticed some unexpected object on top of a cupboard or in some other location visible only from on high ... and later, when someone checks, the object really is there ... [spooky music] ...
  - aitchnyu 4y ago
    18 hospitals planted such objects so that only beings floating close to the ceiling can see them. Wonder if those objects are still there and how the rest of the research went. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/10/26/130829358/are-near-death-experiences-real https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/10/26/130829358...
  - andyjohnson0 4y ago
    > stories Are there actual, verified instances of this happening?
    - NateEag 4y ago
      The canonical compilation of these anecdotes is "The Self Does Not Die": https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Self_Does_Not_Die.html?id=LBCbDAEACAAJ https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Self_Does_Not_Die.h... There are a few stories in it that left me raising my eyebrows and going "well, that seems improbable." I've not found any I couldn't construct a reductionist dismissal for (usually of the form "confirmation bias - someone had to eventually have the hallucination that corresponded with reality and we don't hear about the failures" or "the witnesses memories are incorrect"), but that doesn't mean I find the dismissals entirely plausible or fully convincing.
  - ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
    I like this kind of experiment, but it would have to be tightly controlled to avoid anyone viewing the object and possibly communicating it to the patient. Maybe some kind of duplicated 2FA device that shows a time-changing code and the twin device records its output over time - that would be tricky to cheat.

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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
bloak 4y ago
Of course there are also stories of people who claim to have left their body and seen the operating theatre from above and to have noticed some unexpected object on top of a cupboard or in some other location visible only from on high ... and later, when someone checks, the object really is there ... [spooky music] ...
- aitchnyu 4y ago
  18 hospitals planted such objects so that only beings floating close to the ceiling can see them. Wonder if those objects are still there and how the rest of the research went. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/10/26/130829358/are-near-death-experiences-real https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/10/26/130829358...
- andyjohnson0 4y ago
  > stories Are there actual, verified instances of this happening?
  - NateEag 4y ago
    The canonical compilation of these anecdotes is "The Self Does Not Die": https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Self_Does_Not_Die.html?id=LBCbDAEACAAJ https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Self_Does_Not_Die.h... There are a few stories in it that left me raising my eyebrows and going "well, that seems improbable." I've not found any I couldn't construct a reductionist dismissal for (usually of the form "confirmation bias - someone had to eventually have the hallucination that corresponded with reality and we don't hear about the failures" or "the witnesses memories are incorrect"), but that doesn't mean I find the dismissals entirely plausible or fully convincing.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  I like this kind of experiment, but it would have to be tightly controlled to avoid anyone viewing the object and possibly communicating it to the patient. Maybe some kind of duplicated 2FA device that shows a time-changing code and the twin device records its output over time - that would be tricky to cheat.