Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was tempted to ask you to do "Balls" next! I love those kinds of games.
ew
Not THAT kind of game!
Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences
211–220 of 223 posts
Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes there are clearly real magic questions like why are we, where are we etc but not if we have a soul
We can't even define what intelligence is, and soul is a much subtler matter.
The idea of a soul independent of our body is fantasy and not based on anything.
We know that you can't survive without a brain. We know that your personality changes if your brain gets damaged.
It's very far fetched to talk about soul as anything else than just fantasy.
Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are only aware of the mind's internal representation of objective reality.
Who is aware? The atoms in the brain are aware?
Hard to draw a line without a good definition of awareness. An entire adult brain loaded with a life of experiences? Certainly yes. A 10-week fetus? Almost certainly no.
Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
> very interesting, do you know the name of this phenomenon? Not OP, but they are describing apophenia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia Many things can trigger it, even high doses of caffeine (such as drinking too much coffee).
Hyperassociativity is not necessarily apophenia. Apophenia is finding meaningful patterns in random noise, but it is not clear that the patterns being discovered were in random noise, or if the person merely saw the present patterns more clearly. That can happen too, and is not apophenia. It's something more like hypercognition
The original context of the discussion was altering consciousness under the influence of psychedelics. The phenomenon of apophenia is well known in that context and has some unfortunate side effects that overlap with other communities, such as the conspirituality subculture, all of which make use of an almost institutionalized form of apophenia that is accepted as valid by their adherents. More interestingly, this kind of imagery is often used as a social glue to keep the community in sync. The most simple and basic example is the use of imagery such as tie-dye by people in the psychedelic community. The colors and patterns themselves are highly reminiscent of a drug-induced hallucination. The images of colorful, random bits of noise produced by tie-dye designs promote a kind of basic apophenia at the most sensory level which allow the members of the subgroup to engage in apophenic flights of fancy at will by using their eyes. This can evolve into more elaborate forms that go beyond the sensory system, like the kind of all encompassing, conceptual conspiracy theories that are common to more religious and spiritual subsets of related communities. These intellectual flights of fancy are similar to tie-dye designs that facilitate apophenia. Fundamentalist Christians and QAnon adherents, as only two examples, also make great use of this, in their search for signs and symbols that emerge out of the random chaos of everyday experience. This kind of patternicity-seeking is common to these communities, and many of their shared values and beliefs come out of their use of apophenia to create and augment their experience of new or altered realities that align with the values of the group. In a very real way, this is a form of alternate reality role playing, the only problem being that for many of them, they see it as real. This is where the disconnect emerges post-experience. In an attempt to recapture the magic of the altered state, many of them will forget about the mundane nature of noise and how patterns will emerge from random chaos just about anywhere, and attribute real, concrete information where none in fact exists. This is the problem.
Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences
#215Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences
#216If there's one hill I'm determined to die on (given the information that I have anyway) is that any scientific finding extrapolating information from "brain waves" or "region activation" is little more than modern day phrenology. Of course this is not an original thought, though I find it alarming that it's the minority opinion seeing as EEG/fMRI augury suffers from blatant methodological and even statistical flaws.…
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Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is "provide no predictive power" achieved?
> How is "provide no predictive power" achieved? It's very similar to being untestable. If a hypothesis provides a prediction, but can alter the interpretation after the event to fit the facts, then it's providing no predictive power. e.g. If someone predicts that rewards/punishes people when they die (which alters their near death experience), but then amends their interpretation of good/bad to fit the data, then it…
> If a hypothesis provides a prediction, but can alter the interpretation after the event to fit the facts, then it's providing no predictive power. e.g.
Is this an accurate and comprehensive description of the situation we have before us though?
> If someone predicts that rewards/punishes people when they die (which alters their near death experience), but then amends their interpretation of good/bad to fit the data, then it can't be used to predict anything.
That you can identify one attribute of this nature is no guarantee that all attributes (which is not known) are of this kind.
Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No matter how in touch one might feel with whatever mystic stuff out there, no matter how profound it might feel, I've yet to see any evidence whatsoever of that somehow proving there effectively is something out there. Doesn't matter those feelings are very real, but it's just.. feelings. Do you have a pretty diverse range of experiences on psychedelics backing this up?
'back up' is a bit hard because of the anecdotal nature, but for me this is just the most logical explanation and as said: I have yet to see even the slightest piece of scientific evidence pointing to something else. Whereas there's enough of science supporting the way I think. I remain skeptical of course, though it's more of a 'I want to belive' type of thing.
> 'back up' is a bit hard because of the anecdotal nature, but for me this is just the most logical explanation
"The most 'logical' explanation" is very often a function of psychedelic usage (and various other experiences one may have had, or not).
> and as said: I have yet to see even the slightest piece of scientific evidence pointing to something else. Whereas there's enough of science supporting the way I think.
In actual science, an abscence of evidence is not proof of abscence though.
> I remain skeptical of course, though it's more of a 'I want to belive' type of thing.
For both sides!
Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But it’s not magical either. What is the meaning of magical in this context though?
It’s not something that cannot be understood in terms of neurons sending ions across membranes and electrical potentials.
That would vary greatly on the specific meaning one is using for the term "understood".
Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hyperassociativity is not necessarily apophenia. Apophenia is finding meaningful patterns in random noise, but it is not clear that the patterns being discovered were in random noise, or if the person merely saw the present patterns more clearly. That can happen too, and is not apophenia. It's something more like hypercognition
The original context of the discussion was altering consciousness under the influence of psychedelics. The phenomenon of apophenia is well known in that context and has some unfortunate side effects that overlap with other communities, such as the conspirituality subculture, all of which make use of an almost institutionalized form of apophenia that is accepted as valid by their adherents. More interestingly, this ki…
Yea, certainly not what I experienced at all. Giving a 'diagnosis' as GP did, cannot be done based on a brief HN comment.