8 ms·

The most accurate thing we can say is that no one knows what happens to consciousness after death. The evidence we have, like NDEs, doesn't support a continuati

The most accurate thing we can say is that no one knows what happens to consciousness after death. The evidence we have, like NDEs, doesn't support a continuation of consciousness beyond bodily disintegration.

mistermann 3y ago
If this was not actually the case, would you necessarily be able to know? If so, can you describe the novel, literally foolproof epistemic methodology you are using?
- stvltvs 3y ago
  I'm saying that we don't know and should withhold our belief one way or the other until there is sufficient evidence to help us tell the difference.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - stvltvs 3y ago
      Most people believe one way or the other. We don't however know what is true (meaning in this case having a reasonably justified belief based on looking at the evidence as a whole and weighing alternate explanations). The evidence doesn't rise to the level that anyone can reasonably claim to know one way or the other. People just feel like they know which isn't the same thing as knowing.
    - dang 3y ago
      Would you please stop posting these cross-examination comments? You've been doing it endlessly, it seems, and perpetuating flamewars in the process. This is not what HN is for. I realize it's not your intent to troll, but that is the effect you've been having, and we have to moderate by effects, not intent: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=troll%20effects%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - mistermann 3y ago
        Is HN for the spreading of untruths? Should the HN guidelines perhaps be modified to reflect that pursuit of truth has an undocumented upper bound that shall not be breached? That way it would be more transparent what HN is about, though it would give up the powerful flexibility and illusory nature of ambiguity. Tough call! I'm curious why you never (or rarely) seem to scold people for practicing soothsaying and other forms of pseudoscience under the guise of science & rationality. I'm also curious if you ever wonder what good the substantial cognitive power concentrated on HN could bring to the world if we were to play our cards mildly differently.
        pvg 3y ago
        Tough call! It's not a tough call that you can't have a conversation about truth, pseudoscience or anything else in the form of a harangue and it's supposed to be a site for conversation.
        mistermann 3y ago
        [flagged]
        pvg 3y ago
        It might be a subjective opinion but if enough people have the subjective opinion you are writing harangues (which, as you can read, is the case), you get the effect of harangue-writing whether you think you are or don't. So you have to stop the harangue-like writing in order to meaningfully participate. There are a bunch of guidelines and endless moderator commentary about that.
        mistermann 3y ago
        harangue. / (həˈræŋ) / verb. to address (a person or crowd) in an angry, vehement, or forcefully persuasive way. I don't see how this applies, especially since if anything it is other people who are engaged in persuasion, and experiencing anger or other negative emotions. I am sincere in that I believe that truth matters, and should at least be taken into consideration. Seriously, what is the big issue with disagreeing with the crowd, without applying speculative subjective framing to the situation?
pmarreck 3y ago
Is there an amount of concordant eyewitness testimony that should count as evidence? If your answer to that is "no", you're not being reasonable. The courts of most countries would also disagree with you. This even takes into account the fact that "eyewitness testimony is bad"... Like sure, maybe if it's 10, but if it's 100 people all making extremely similar claims? 1000? 10,000? The NDE people often use language like "realer than what I thought was real". While some drugs can induce this too, drugs also give quite random experiences, while the NDE thing seems fairly well-structured with few exceptions. It also seems internally-consistent (as in, within the realm of itself and its claims about reality, it doesn't seem to violate its own rules). If I was anorgasmic and thousands of people told me that orgasms are real and "you know it when you have one," why should (or shouldn't) I believe them? Have you heard of the Kalman filter? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter Consider that every eyewitness can be mathematically treated as a "noisy sensor" (who might also be a bad actor via lying). What if we applied a Kalman filter to quantized claims made across thousands of self-claimed NDE experiencers? Might this be a way to quantify (and therefore bring into the realm of rationality) eyewitness testimony of this nature? There are many things we consider "real" that we can't directly measure, btw. Why (from a science or mathematical perspective) is Taylor Swift so popular? How would we determine this without asking people (which puts us right back into "eyewitness testimony" again)?
- stvltvs 3y ago
  I don't dispute that people have NDEs and that they sincerely believe what they say. The problem is that that kind of evidence cannot in principle support the continuity of consciousness after bodily disintegration because 1) the body is still intact and 2) they don't test the difference between experiences near death and those after death. There is no way for a person to know if what they experienced happened during a time that an outside observer could see no brain activity. To take another example, many people report the experience of waking up with a demon, visible or invisible, sitting on their chest. I've had this experience. Should we accept this eyewitness testimony at face value? Isn't the simpler, more naturalistic explanation of sleep paralysis more fitted to the evidence? https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-you-should-know-about-sleep-paralysis-and-sleep-demons https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-you-should-know-abou...

mistermann 3y ago

If this was not actually the case, would you necessarily be able to know? If so, can you describe the novel, literally foolproof epistemic methodology you are using?

stvltvs 3y ago
I'm saying that we don't know and should withhold our belief one way or the other until there is sufficient evidence to help us tell the difference.
- mistermann 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - stvltvs 3y ago
    Most people believe one way or the other. We don't however know what is true (meaning in this case having a reasonably justified belief based on looking at the evidence as a whole and weighing alternate explanations). The evidence doesn't rise to the level that anyone can reasonably claim to know one way or the other. People just feel like they know which isn't the same thing as knowing.
  - dang 3y ago
    Would you please stop posting these cross-examination comments? You've been doing it endlessly, it seems, and perpetuating flamewars in the process. This is not what HN is for. I realize it's not your intent to troll, but that is the effect you've been having, and we have to moderate by effects, not intent: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=troll%20effects%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - mistermann 3y ago
      Is HN for the spreading of untruths? Should the HN guidelines perhaps be modified to reflect that pursuit of truth has an undocumented upper bound that shall not be breached? That way it would be more transparent what HN is about, though it would give up the powerful flexibility and illusory nature of ambiguity. Tough call! I'm curious why you never (or rarely) seem to scold people for practicing soothsaying and other forms of pseudoscience under the guise of science & rationality. I'm also curious if you ever wonder what good the substantial cognitive power concentrated on HN could bring to the world if we were to play our cards mildly differently.
      - pvg 3y ago
        Tough call! It's not a tough call that you can't have a conversation about truth, pseudoscience or anything else in the form of a harangue and it's supposed to be a site for conversation.
        mistermann 3y ago
        [flagged]
        pvg 3y ago
        It might be a subjective opinion but if enough people have the subjective opinion you are writing harangues (which, as you can read, is the case), you get the effect of harangue-writing whether you think you are or don't. So you have to stop the harangue-like writing in order to meaningfully participate. There are a bunch of guidelines and endless moderator commentary about that.
        mistermann 3y ago
        harangue. / (həˈræŋ) / verb. to address (a person or crowd) in an angry, vehement, or forcefully persuasive way. I don't see how this applies, especially since if anything it is other people who are engaged in persuasion, and experiencing anger or other negative emotions. I am sincere in that I believe that truth matters, and should at least be taken into consideration. Seriously, what is the big issue with disagreeing with the crowd, without applying speculative subjective framing to the situation?

pmarreck 3y ago

Is there an amount of concordant eyewitness testimony that should count as evidence? If your answer to that is "no", you're not being reasonable. The courts of most countries would also disagree with you. This even takes into account the fact that "eyewitness testimony is bad"... Like sure, maybe if it's 10, but if it's 100 people all making extremely similar claims? 1000? 10,000? The NDE people often use language like "realer than what I thought was real". While some drugs can induce this too, drugs also give quite random experiences, while the NDE thing seems fairly well-structured with few exceptions. It also seems internally-consistent (as in, within the realm of itself and its claims about reality, it doesn't seem to violate its own rules). If I was anorgasmic and thousands of people told me that orgasms are real and "you know it when you have one," why should (or shouldn't) I believe them? Have you heard of the Kalman filter? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter Consider that every eyewitness can be mathematically treated as a "noisy sensor" (who might also be a bad actor via lying). What if we applied a Kalman filter to quantized claims made across thousands of self-claimed NDE experiencers? Might this be a way to quantify (and therefore bring into the realm of rationality) eyewitness testimony of this nature? There are many things we consider "real" that we can't directly measure, btw. Why (from a science or mathematical perspective) is Taylor Swift so popular? How would we determine this without asking people (which puts us right back into "eyewitness testimony" again)?

stvltvs 3y ago
I don't dispute that people have NDEs and that they sincerely believe what they say. The problem is that that kind of evidence cannot in principle support the continuity of consciousness after bodily disintegration because 1) the body is still intact and 2) they don't test the difference between experiences near death and those after death. There is no way for a person to know if what they experienced happened during a time that an outside observer could see no brain activity. To take another example, many people report the experience of waking up with a demon, visible or invisible, sitting on their chest. I've had this experience. Should we accept this eyewitness testimony at face value? Isn't the simpler, more naturalistic explanation of sleep paralysis more fitted to the evidence? https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-you-should-know-about-sleep-paralysis-and-sleep-demons https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-you-should-know-abou...