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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 c

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...

pmarreck 3y ago
I do believe most demon experiences are sleep paralysis. (I can't assert that all of them are, no more than I can assert with certainty without existing in every female body ever that reports of "female ejaculation" are just urine.) Regarding brain activity or lack thereof during an NDE, here's a perspective: https://old.reddit.com/r/NDE/comments/188i98i/ndes_with_confirmed_no_brain_activity/kbn80p3/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/NDE/comments/188i98i/ndes_with_conf... “In cardiac arrest, even neuronal action-potentials, the ultimate physical basis for coordination of neural activity between widely separated brain regions, are rapidly abolished (Kelly et al., 2007). Moreover, cells in the hippocampus, the region thought to be essential for memory formation, are especially vulnerable to the effects of anoxia (Vriens et al., 1996). In short, it is not credible to suppose that NDEs occurring under conditions of general anesthesia, let alone cardiac arrest, can be accounted for in terms of some hypothetical residual capacity of the brain to process and store complex information under those conditions.” “Michael Sabom, MD, a cardiologist in Atlanta, Georgia, monitored the brain waves of his patients using an electroencephalograph (EEG) and was able to show that some who had reported NDEs had been clinically dead, meaning they registered no electrical activity in their brain.” Most NDE's are associated with heart stoppages. And in fact, NDE's started to begin to be reported more after working resuscitation techniques became more fleshed-out.
- stvltvs 3y ago
  My thought is that NDEs might occur before or after the cessation of neural activity. From a first person perspective, there would be no way to distinguish whether it happened when there was no neural activity. From an outside perspective, it would need to be a rigorous, carefully designed test to distinguish. If not properly designed, it would be easy to bias the results through unblinded participants, etc. I'm not aware of such a test being conducted?
  - pmarreck 3y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/NDE/comments/188i98i/ndes_with_confirmed_no_brain_activity/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NDE/comments/188i98i/ndes_with_conf...
mistermann 3y ago
> 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. Exactly...so, when a human on planet earth, 2023, encounters such a scenario (indeterminateness), they project an illusion upon it, declare that illusion to be true, and most other humans will agree with them, depending on the metaphysical framework (aka:culture - currently, we are in the age of "science", before that it was "religion") they have been trained upon (like an LLM....if there are differences, I'd very much like to know). You can literally see this in action as people talk, relatively highly rational people will literally make things up, utilize very well known (by science) cultural/psychological exists, etc etc etc. For fun, try this: point out where they claim something (in general, or specifically), and then ask them for proof/evidence - then, do this 1000+ times - you will see a normal distribution of stories emerge, reliably. There is something very weird about humans in 2024.
- pmarreck 3y ago
  What did you think of my idea of treating eyewitness claims with a Kalman filter (after quantizing the elements of the claims)?
  - mistermann 3y ago
    I think it is an excellent approach, I expect that we could benefit from applying it to all claims, including all the not actually/necessarily factual "facts" that inevitable emerge when these sorts of topics are discussed. But applying it in epistemically inconclusive areas like this seems like something worth trying, for more reasons than one (there is a lot of harmful social disharmony in such areas). Part of the point I'm completely unsuccessful in making here, or a way to look at it, is: different ideologies have different methodologies and standards for practicing epistemology (belief, "reality", etc) - the "NDE type" (religion, woo woo, etc) of thinkers have their form and quality, and "scientific"[1] thinkers have theirs. To me, the scientific folks have an objectively and vastly superior methodology to the others....however, it is far from the best - the best genuinely wonders what is true, which in my experience is always(!) considered a literally unacceptable approach (as can be seen in such conversations: I have been told that asking such question is not allowed here on HN). I propose that if even our very best "intellectual hangouts" culturally insist on suboptimal thinking, if not denying that it is even possible (~trying to cover it up), it increases risk within the system (I always like to use climate change to substantiate the claim). [1] to some degree - like the religious, science practitioners are also unable to follow their scriptures to a T, like remembering that their theories are theories (that is just one example).

pmarreck 3y ago

I do believe most demon experiences are sleep paralysis. (I can't assert that all of them are, no more than I can assert with certainty without existing in every female body ever that reports of "female ejaculation" are just urine.) Regarding brain activity or lack thereof during an NDE, here's a perspective: https://old.reddit.com/r/NDE/comments/188i98i/ndes_with_confirmed_no_brain_activity/kbn80p3/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/NDE/comments/188i98i/ndes_with_conf... “In cardiac arrest, even neuronal action-potentials, the ultimate physical basis for coordination of neural activity between widely separated brain regions, are rapidly abolished (Kelly et al., 2007). Moreover, cells in the hippocampus, the region thought to be essential for memory formation, are especially vulnerable to the effects of anoxia (Vriens et al., 1996). In short, it is not credible to suppose that NDEs occurring under conditions of general anesthesia, let alone cardiac arrest, can be accounted for in terms of some hypothetical residual capacity of the brain to process and store complex information under those conditions.” “Michael Sabom, MD, a cardiologist in Atlanta, Georgia, monitored the brain waves of his patients using an electroencephalograph (EEG) and was able to show that some who had reported NDEs had been clinically dead, meaning they registered no electrical activity in their brain.” Most NDE's are associated with heart stoppages. And in fact, NDE's started to begin to be reported more after working resuscitation techniques became more fleshed-out.

stvltvs 3y ago
My thought is that NDEs might occur before or after the cessation of neural activity. From a first person perspective, there would be no way to distinguish whether it happened when there was no neural activity. From an outside perspective, it would need to be a rigorous, carefully designed test to distinguish. If not properly designed, it would be easy to bias the results through unblinded participants, etc. I'm not aware of such a test being conducted?
- pmarreck 3y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/NDE/comments/188i98i/ndes_with_confirmed_no_brain_activity/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NDE/comments/188i98i/ndes_with_conf...

mistermann 3y ago

> 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. Exactly...so, when a human on planet earth, 2023, encounters such a scenario (indeterminateness), they project an illusion upon it, declare that illusion to be true, and most other humans will agree with them, depending on the metaphysical framework (aka:culture - currently, we are in the age of "science", before that it was "religion") they have been trained upon (like an LLM....if there are differences, I'd very much like to know). You can literally see this in action as people talk, relatively highly rational people will literally make things up, utilize very well known (by science) cultural/psychological exists, etc etc etc. For fun, try this: point out where they claim something (in general, or specifically), and then ask them for proof/evidence - then, do this 1000+ times - you will see a normal distribution of stories emerge, reliably. There is something very weird about humans in 2024.

pmarreck 3y ago
What did you think of my idea of treating eyewitness claims with a Kalman filter (after quantizing the elements of the claims)?
- mistermann 3y ago
  I think it is an excellent approach, I expect that we could benefit from applying it to all claims, including all the not actually/necessarily factual "facts" that inevitable emerge when these sorts of topics are discussed. But applying it in epistemically inconclusive areas like this seems like something worth trying, for more reasons than one (there is a lot of harmful social disharmony in such areas). Part of the point I'm completely unsuccessful in making here, or a way to look at it, is: different ideologies have different methodologies and standards for practicing epistemology (belief, "reality", etc) - the "NDE type" (religion, woo woo, etc) of thinkers have their form and quality, and "scientific"[1] thinkers have theirs. To me, the scientific folks have an objectively and vastly superior methodology to the others....however, it is far from the best - the best genuinely wonders what is true, which in my experience is always(!) considered a literally unacceptable approach (as can be seen in such conversations: I have been told that asking such question is not allowed here on HN). I propose that if even our very best "intellectual hangouts" culturally insist on suboptimal thinking, if not denying that it is even possible (~trying to cover it up), it increases risk within the system (I always like to use climate change to substantiate the claim). [1] to some degree - like the religious, science practitioners are also unable to follow their scriptures to a T, like remembering that their theories are theories (that is just one example).