Awareness at Death • Hacker News Board

Re: Awareness at Death

#111

Post by clnq » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 12:20 AM UTC

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #44

Very cool to even explore this area. Although I do have to ask how on earth can this work in terms of patient consent? Because if you ask conscient me, would I want a researcher waffling around in a room I am being resuscitated in, I would certainly not consent. Physical space around the patient and distraction free environment are a premium in a resuscitation. The "Without interfering with the resuscitation" part re…

Probably almost all near-death studies are done with consent. I would give it.

Resuscitation is very algorithmic and it’s unlikely that the medic doing it will be distracted by someone working in that space. The physical work is hard, the mental load is not that high after proper training, which often aims to make the work feel automatic. It might look chaotic, but the reasons resuscitation teams call instructions and observations out isn’t because they’re coming up with a treatment plan on the spot like in some TV shows. It’s just the algorithm.

I also think it’s good and brave to explore this area. Near-death experience research is stigmatized in medicine. Many academics dismiss it as parapsychology and pseudoscience. I think this is touched on in the article.

Re: Awareness at Death

#112

Post by intelVISA » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 12:23 AM UTC

macNchz wrote: post #103

_nalply wrote: post #71

Out-of-body experiences are real. My wife had one. Because of special circumstances I am convinced that she didn't know about them. It was an unknown and completely new thing for her. When I told her that some people also experienced out-of-body, she was stunned. I came to the realisation that science has limits. I have the hypothesis that the set of measurable effects is smaller than the set of all true things. In o…

I've had three out of body experiences that I think are completely attributable to things happening in my brain at the time. They were interesting and memorable but I'm not sure they represented some kind of unmeasurable/unknowable para phenomena out of the reach of science. (One while falling asleep sitting up after many hours awake studying for exams in college, one while trying out some lucid dreaming techniques I…

If you mess up trying to LD you may end up alternating between out-of-body and sleep paralysis :')

Re: Awareness at Death

#113

Post by dilawar » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 1:29 AM UTC

7thaccount wrote: post #61

metamet wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourse…

My father is in pretty good shape (very active), but also very religious these days and he's basically told me nothing in this life matters and he's ready for the afterlife which he believes will be a paradise. The Sagan quote is ironic as he was a huge fan as a younger man. It's always saddened me that he has trouble focusing on the joys in this life. There's a lot to be grateful for, for those of us lucky enough to…

No wonder most if not all religions deny death but promising afterlife or via some other ideas.

Re: Awareness at Death

#114

Post by voldacar » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 1:37 AM UTC

wessorh wrote: post #76

At the end of 2022 I caught Legionaries and arrived at the hospital with 48% O2 saturation and promptly slipped into a coma. Next came a trake and a respirator which was placed in a medically induced coma. I was unconscious for almost 2 months in the ER. I'd get CPR twice and once I awoke fully the head nurse came in and asked (once I could talk) how it was to meet Jesus. I didn't meet Jesus but I did hang with sever…

What were those alien beings like? And the deity?

Re: Awareness at Death

#115

Post by k9unit » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 1:49 AM UTC

_nalply wrote: post #71

Out-of-body experiences are real. My wife had one. Because of special circumstances I am convinced that she didn't know about them. It was an unknown and completely new thing for her. When I told her that some people also experienced out-of-body, she was stunned. I came to the realisation that science has limits. I have the hypothesis that the set of measurable effects is smaller than the set of all true things. In o…

I may have experienced an OOBE myself, but I'm not sure. Anyway, what I'm interested in is, let's say your looking down from above. Are you able to accurately describe details behind you? Things that your eyes can't possibly see? Are there cases where someone is with another person, describing information they shouldn't normally be able to sense? What happens when they do?

Re: Awareness at Death

#116

Post by k9unit » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 1:55 AM UTC

sibeliuss wrote: post #58

Given that near death experiences are very often reported as being incredibly detailed and complex, often involving time dilation modes enabling one to be "away for years", its hard to imagine 'name the fruit' being the thing a person in that state brings back. This does seem like an interesting area of research though if the right experimental stimulus could be found.

I don't see why it shouldn't be possible to experience many years in your brain without experiencing it in the real world. It's a lot of information being processed by your brain while being disconnected from normal time.

When a drug is inducing time dilation, why is that? Usually it happens when the effect is strong, and in the drugs that cause it, that usually means being more disconnected or in your own world. Or when working on something you are really into, and not realizing it's been 8 hours in what felt like 2.

Re: Awareness at Death

#117

Post by hnfong » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 1:57 AM UTC

ShamelessC wrote: post #97

_nalply wrote: post #71

Out-of-body experiences are real. My wife had one. Because of special circumstances I am convinced that she didn't know about them. It was an unknown and completely new thing for her. When I told her that some people also experienced out-of-body, she was stunned. I came to the realisation that science has limits. I have the hypothesis that the set of measurable effects is smaller than the set of all true things. In o…

> It was an unknown and completely new thing for her. My priors tell me that your wife simply had some sort of chemical induced dream or hallucination due to the extreme stress of being near death. Why are you so quick to assume something supernatural occurred?

You answered yourself. You had your priors. GP had theirs.

Re: Awareness at Death

#118

Post by hnfong » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 2:03 AM UTC

_nalply wrote: post #71

Out-of-body experiences are real. My wife had one. Because of special circumstances I am convinced that she didn't know about them. It was an unknown and completely new thing for her. When I told her that some people also experienced out-of-body, she was stunned. I came to the realisation that science has limits. I have the hypothesis that the set of measurable effects is smaller than the set of all true things. In o…

> I have the hypothesis that the set of measurable effects is smaller than the set of all true things.

This seems to be an indisputable fact, at least for "scientifically measurable" effects that is.

I've been trying to explicitly carve out the phenomena where modern science doesn't cover, and in short, they are the things that are: non-repeatable (on demand) in laboratory settings involving subjective experiences.

Your wife's experiences is a perfect example of that.

It's interesting because one can relax the requirements for evidence and still learn something coherent about the world.

Re: Awareness at Death

#119

Post by maushu » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 2:08 AM UTC

dilawar wrote: post #113

7thaccount wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father is in pretty good shape (very active), but also very religious these days and he's basically told me nothing in this life matters and he's ready for the afterlife which he believes will be a paradise. The Sagan quote is ironic as he was a huge fan as a younger man. It's always saddened me that he has trouble focusing on the joys in this life. There's a lot to be grateful for, for those of us lucky enough to…

No wonder most if not all religions deny death but promising afterlife or via some other ideas.

It's much easier that way to make people self sacrifice for the religion, gives a meaning to their life and pacifies their fear of death.

Re: Awareness at Death

#120

Post by taberiand » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 2:26 AM UTC

bumby wrote: post #33

taberiand wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ex…

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…

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?