3 ms·

Anesthesia is a rather different state than sleep.

api 2mo ago
I had some serious surgery a few years ago and paid attention when I went under to see if I could recall anything. Nope. You don’t exist for that time. Anesthesiologist counts down 10, 9, 8, 7, and then I was teleported to the recovery bed. I consider it incredibly weird and very unlike sleep. Consciousness is off, instantly, then back.
- boxed 2mo ago
  Well... memory is off at least.
  - api 2mo ago
    Ahh, yes, the cosmic horror hypothesis about how anesthesia works. You can't move and experience everything but remember nothing. But hey, I don't have cancer anymore. So if I had to endure four hours of agony that I don't remember, I'll take it.
    - boxed 2mo ago
      Well we do know you can't feel pain, because we've actually done the MRI studies to confirm. Which makes me feel a lot better personally. But I also have a doctor friend who tells me how removing my appendix actually worked: I go under. Then they take out the appendix. Then they wake me so that I can, with help, move from the operating table to the wheeled bed. This part is not a part of my memory, but people can talk to me and I can get down from the table and onto the bed (again, with help). So I'd say there's some middle ground here.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
txrx0000 2mo ago
When observed by a different conscious being, yes. But from the inside observed by oneself, it feels quite similar, besides the fact that sleep is initiated by oneself, and the wakeful state transition for sleep is more gradual than for anesthesia. I think that distinction matters because strictly speaking, oneself only has access to one's own consciousness, and that defines one's own understanding of the word "consciousness". It's not possible for me to be you after all, and whatever inferences I make about other people being conscious is based on the fact that I experience my consciousness, and you are similar to me in some specific way (such as being, presumably, a human), therefore you must be conscious. Of course, I'm taking a materialist stance here but that's what's practical to talk about anyway.
- munificent 2mo ago
  > But from the inside observed by oneself, it feels quite similar, besides the fact that sleep is initiated by oneself, and the wakeful state transition for sleep is more gradual than for anesthesia. Have you been anesthetized before? Different forms are very different, but none of them feel like sleep, at all. General anesthesia feels like a time simply skipped forward. Like a chunk of your memory tape was cut out completely. Twilight sedation feels like you temporarily inhabited someone else's body but the experience was so strange that you blocked out almost all of the memory. Sleeping and dreaming is totally different.
  - txrx0000 2mo ago
    I've been under general anesthesia, but it does not feel too different. I'm dead when sleeping, and basically never dream. I should have said "dreamless sleep" in the earlier comment to be more precise because dreaming is obviously different, but it happens so rarely I forget it exists.
    - shric 2mo ago
      > basically never dream I’m open to correction but my understanding is everyone dreams when they have REM sleep and everyone has some REM sleep every night unless there are rare medical conditions which would be unhealthy if there is a long period of no REM sleep. People who believe they never dream (including myself before I learned this) simply don’t remember it. If you were woken artificially during REM you might remember fragments.

api 2mo ago

I had some serious surgery a few years ago and paid attention when I went under to see if I could recall anything. Nope. You don’t exist for that time. Anesthesiologist counts down 10, 9, 8, 7, and then I was teleported to the recovery bed. I consider it incredibly weird and very unlike sleep. Consciousness is off, instantly, then back.

boxed 2mo ago
Well... memory is off at least.
- api 2mo ago
  Ahh, yes, the cosmic horror hypothesis about how anesthesia works. You can't move and experience everything but remember nothing. But hey, I don't have cancer anymore. So if I had to endure four hours of agony that I don't remember, I'll take it.
  - boxed 2mo ago
    Well we do know you can't feel pain, because we've actually done the MRI studies to confirm. Which makes me feel a lot better personally. But I also have a doctor friend who tells me how removing my appendix actually worked: I go under. Then they take out the appendix. Then they wake me so that I can, with help, move from the operating table to the wheeled bed. This part is not a part of my memory, but people can talk to me and I can get down from the table and onto the bed (again, with help). So I'd say there's some middle ground here.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

txrx0000 2mo ago

When observed by a different conscious being, yes. But from the inside observed by oneself, it feels quite similar, besides the fact that sleep is initiated by oneself, and the wakeful state transition for sleep is more gradual than for anesthesia. I think that distinction matters because strictly speaking, oneself only has access to one's own consciousness, and that defines one's own understanding of the word "consciousness". It's not possible for me to be you after all, and whatever inferences I make about other people being conscious is based on the fact that I experience my consciousness, and you are similar to me in some specific way (such as being, presumably, a human), therefore you must be conscious. Of course, I'm taking a materialist stance here but that's what's practical to talk about anyway.

munificent 2mo ago
> But from the inside observed by oneself, it feels quite similar, besides the fact that sleep is initiated by oneself, and the wakeful state transition for sleep is more gradual than for anesthesia. Have you been anesthetized before? Different forms are very different, but none of them feel like sleep, at all. General anesthesia feels like a time simply skipped forward. Like a chunk of your memory tape was cut out completely. Twilight sedation feels like you temporarily inhabited someone else's body but the experience was so strange that you blocked out almost all of the memory. Sleeping and dreaming is totally different.
- txrx0000 2mo ago
  I've been under general anesthesia, but it does not feel too different. I'm dead when sleeping, and basically never dream. I should have said "dreamless sleep" in the earlier comment to be more precise because dreaming is obviously different, but it happens so rarely I forget it exists.
  - shric 2mo ago
    > basically never dream I’m open to correction but my understanding is everyone dreams when they have REM sleep and everyone has some REM sleep every night unless there are rare medical conditions which would be unhealthy if there is a long period of no REM sleep. People who believe they never dream (including myself before I learned this) simply don’t remember it. If you were woken artificially during REM you might remember fragments.