7 ms·

The brain is a strange thing. Perception and experience is very difficult to wrap one's head around. I have fainted several times, for different reasons. Ofte

The brain is a strange thing. Perception and experience is very difficult to wrap one's head around. I have fainted several times, for different reasons. Often in medical settings but also in other settings. Often when I wake up I am in a state where I feel like I’ve been gone for hours, it feels like I’ve been basically dreaming the equivalent of a full length movie, when in reality I’ve been out for maybe a minute. It’s strange. It seems impossible to decide what I actually experienced and what I, after the fact, believe I experienced. I reason about the “life flashes before my eyes” concept similarly. I believe in fact it doesn’t, that a persons brain just makes one believe that has happened, after the fact. But. What do I know.

mongol 3y ago
I have fainted twice. The first time, I cannot have been unconscious more than max 5 minutes, probably quite a bit less. But it felt like waking up well rested after a long nights good sleep. But I was very fortunate. I was very close to have hit my neck in a table when falling backwards. Then I most likely would never have woken up.
DougN7 3y ago
I experienced the “life flashing before my eyes” once. It was a situation where I thought I was about to die. It was like a very high speed real of all my memories playing. I was amazed (while it was happening) that it was happening just like I’d heard about - so at least in my opinion it wasn’t an invented memory later. Of course I might say that even it was. My theory is the mind was desperately trying to find a similar situation as a hint of how to get out of the current situation, but it’s just a guess. I lived :)
- verteu 3y ago
  Amazing -- could you describe it a bit more?
  - DougN7 3y ago
    Well, I was with someone who had threatened to kill me, and I took that threat very seriously, as it was also made very seriously. It was sort of watching a film that was doing fast forward through my life. I could see it playing in front of me. I guess the room was there in the background. The whole thing took place in about 5 seconds, and my background thought (besides being concerned about dying) was just sort of “huh, so this really happens”. The person then showed that they weren’t going to kill me, but explained how they had been planning it earlier in the day. I never visited that person again.
    - verteu 3y ago
      Wow -- thanks for sharing.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  I almost died at 10 years old from choking. I had some of my life replay like a PowerPoint floating above my vision, where each would float and fade in from the left in a cinematic vignette, then float to the right and fade out as the next came in. I had a distinct sense that I was about to die, and my overwhelming feeling was “wow totally lame I can’t believe I’m dying of choking”. Then a soda was given to me and it dissolved the blockage. I am religious. I believe in life after death of some sort. I don’t see any evolutionary purpose for seeing a life review before death. I believe the creator made the universe and we have a purpose within it, even after death.
taberiand 3y ago
It's not necessary to have an experience that lasts hours in order to have a memory of an experience that lasted hours, even less necessary if it's just the feeling of an experience that lasted hours. Our memory is highly fallible and easily manipulated, at least compared to how much people tend to believe it's a flawless record of the past. All memories exist in the present, a memory created a minute ago about an experience a year ago would feel just as real as the memory created a year ago - probably even more so, given how fresh it would be. Everything I read about near death experiences suggests to me that it's a brain making things up, coupled with more stimuli being processed by the "dead" patient's brain than people assume is possible - accounting, I think, very well for the "things the patient could not have known". There is no life after death, and there is no existence separate to the body - before our birth we were not; now we are; at some point, we won't be again.
- bumby 3y ago
  I have the same conclusions as you, but don't have the confidence to state them so matter-of-factly. There seems a rather large amount of room for "we don't know." And, given that it may not be a testable hypothesis and thus outside the realm of science, there's even room for "we may never know." And before people get in a huff, the same generally goes for the hard problem of consciousness, yet we generally don't go around doubting that others have subjective experience.
  - taberiand 3y ago
    I state it matter-of-factly because I believe the idea of it being supernatural lacks evidence of any sort; there's no reason at all to make that hypothesis in the first place. I feel like the studies (or at least the reporting of the studies) come at the question from the wrong direction - the hypothesis should be that all of these experiences have explanations grounded in the function of the brain and body, because the opposite approach is, as you point out, unfalsifiable. Naturally we don't know, which is why we should assume the explanation that is grounded in reality until it is proven otherwise - especially when the effect of the supernatural answer being true is indistinguishable from the natural answer. If all life after death amounts to in how it affects the living is knowing that the "tunnel of light" is real (but not what lies beyond that), then what use is that information compared to just believing it to be imaginary?

mongol 3y ago

I have fainted twice. The first time, I cannot have been unconscious more than max 5 minutes, probably quite a bit less. But it felt like waking up well rested after a long nights good sleep. But I was very fortunate. I was very close to have hit my neck in a table when falling backwards. Then I most likely would never have woken up.

DougN7 3y ago

I experienced the “life flashing before my eyes” once. It was a situation where I thought I was about to die. It was like a very high speed real of all my memories playing. I was amazed (while it was happening) that it was happening just like I’d heard about - so at least in my opinion it wasn’t an invented memory later. Of course I might say that even it was. My theory is the mind was desperately trying to find a similar situation as a hint of how to get out of the current situation, but it’s just a guess. I lived :)

verteu 3y ago
Amazing -- could you describe it a bit more?
- DougN7 3y ago
  Well, I was with someone who had threatened to kill me, and I took that threat very seriously, as it was also made very seriously. It was sort of watching a film that was doing fast forward through my life. I could see it playing in front of me. I guess the room was there in the background. The whole thing took place in about 5 seconds, and my background thought (besides being concerned about dying) was just sort of “huh, so this really happens”. The person then showed that they weren’t going to kill me, but explained how they had been planning it earlier in the day. I never visited that person again.
  - verteu 3y ago
    Wow -- thanks for sharing.
monero-xmr 3y ago
I almost died at 10 years old from choking. I had some of my life replay like a PowerPoint floating above my vision, where each would float and fade in from the left in a cinematic vignette, then float to the right and fade out as the next came in. I had a distinct sense that I was about to die, and my overwhelming feeling was “wow totally lame I can’t believe I’m dying of choking”. Then a soda was given to me and it dissolved the blockage. I am religious. I believe in life after death of some sort. I don’t see any evolutionary purpose for seeing a life review before death. I believe the creator made the universe and we have a purpose within it, even after death.

taberiand 3y ago

It's not necessary to have an experience that lasts hours in order to have a memory of an experience that lasted hours, even less necessary if it's just the feeling of an experience that lasted hours. Our memory is highly fallible and easily manipulated, at least compared to how much people tend to believe it's a flawless record of the past. All memories exist in the present, a memory created a minute ago about an experience a year ago would feel just as real as the memory created a year ago - probably even more so, given how fresh it would be. Everything I read about near death experiences suggests to me that it's a brain making things up, coupled with more stimuli being processed by the "dead" patient's brain than people assume is possible - accounting, I think, very well for the "things the patient could not have known". There is no life after death, and there is no existence separate to the body - before our birth we were not; now we are; at some point, we won't be again.

bumby 3y ago
I have the same conclusions as you, but don't have the confidence to state them so matter-of-factly. There seems a rather large amount of room for "we don't know." And, given that it may not be a testable hypothesis and thus outside the realm of science, there's even room for "we may never know." And before people get in a huff, the same generally goes for the hard problem of consciousness, yet we generally don't go around doubting that others have subjective experience.
- taberiand 3y ago
  I state it matter-of-factly because I believe the idea of it being supernatural lacks evidence of any sort; there's no reason at all to make that hypothesis in the first place. I feel like the studies (or at least the reporting of the studies) come at the question from the wrong direction - the hypothesis should be that all of these experiences have explanations grounded in the function of the brain and body, because the opposite approach is, as you point out, unfalsifiable. Naturally we don't know, which is why we should assume the explanation that is grounded in reality until it is proven otherwise - especially when the effect of the supernatural answer being true is indistinguishable from the natural answer. If all life after death amounts to in how it affects the living is knowing that the "tunnel of light" is real (but not what lies beyond that), then what use is that information compared to just believing it to be imaginary?