When I had my ear surgery about 20 years ago, the doctor explained to me that I would be awake for part of the procedure, but the anesthesia meant that I would have no memory of it.¹ It’s a weird thing to think about whether that lack of memory would obviate the pain or discomfort of the moment. ⸻ 1. As it turned out, I was so frightened in the lead-up to the surgery that they had to do general anesthesia on me becau…
I had a dentist explain to me the same for getting my wisdom teeth out, as if it was a selling feature. At least for me, having my memory wiped is far more scary than just being put unconscious (or having some pain and a local anaesthetic).
Had a few eye surgeries (vitrectomies) under sedation, no pain but lots of flashing lights and lots of kaleidoscope patterns. It was pretty wild.
I was lucky that coming out of sedation was actually fantastic, like the only time I can remember feeling that blissfully relaxed was in maybe a few beach holidays I went on as a kid.
> yet MJ was deemed guilty even after proven innocent. He was not “proven innocent”; that’s not how the legal system works. He was “found not guilty” which is a much lower standard than “proven innocent”. (OJ Simpson was similarly found not guilty; do you think he was also “proven innocent”?)
I am aware. Being pedantically correct would ruin the intended rhetorical point of reversing the standard phrase, though. "Deemed guilty even after found not guilty" just doesn't really work. I even knew I was going to get a reply about OJ when I wrote it. Miscarriages of justice certainly do happen, but still we should broadly presume innocence until proven guilty, and none of the evidence or testimony in MJ's case…
> Being pedantically correct would ruin the intended rhetorical point of reversing the standard phrase, though
When I had my ear surgery about 20 years ago, the doctor explained to me that I would be awake for part of the procedure, but the anesthesia meant that I would have no memory of it.¹ It’s a weird thing to think about whether that lack of memory would obviate the pain or discomfort of the moment. ⸻ 1. As it turned out, I was so frightened in the lead-up to the surgery that they had to do general anesthesia on me becau…
> so I was unconscious for the whole thing Or so they claim - the patient would have no memory of that anyway.
The doctor who did the surgery was arguably the best doctor I’ve ever interacted with in my 57 years of life. He was horrible at starting appointments on time (much to the frustration of his staff) because he would spend as long as he felt necessary with each patient, regardless of what the scheduled appointment length was. He was essentially at war with insurance companies about coverage limitations (for the procedure, a stapedectomy, insurance companies wanted to have this be an outpatient procedure but he felt it was better for patients not to have to be in a car immediately after surgery so he informed patients beforehand that they would be checking in as an outpatient and he would declare complications after surgery that required an overnight hospital stay. Similarly, the antibiotic that the insurance companies had as their preferred formulary had a tendency to kill hair cells which made it a bad choice for in-ear application. All of his patients were advised that they had an allergy to this antibiotic and thus would have to be prescribed his preferred antibiotic). So, with this doctor, if he told me that the moon was made of green cheese, I would believe him without reservation.
To be honest, if my only other option was to be buried, I would love to let my brain be connected to some machine that try to keep it as alive-like as possible. Just please don't remove my brain before I'm 1000% certainly dead.
True. You'd probably go crazy as a brain disconnected from your body, regardless of what drugs they give you.. But It'd be an interesting final experience, I guess. I do hope they're getting pain killers along with the anaesthesia, though.
It's not a great article, and it glosses over the reality that if you hooked this brain up to an EEG it would show unequivocal brain death. CELLS of the brain are alive, but in terms of being able to function in any sort of coordinated way there that ship sailed minutes after the person who donated their organs died. The wave of depolarization that marks brain death isn't something we can reverse, and what's being do…
So your saying you would be comfortable putting yourself on the donor list then?
Sure, the key point here is that you die first. Squeamishness is for the living, who have increasingly desperate need of neurological medicines.
This is legal but I can't legally pay another adult for sex or take drugs that could harm me? And there are many restrictions on gambling. It's weird how some morals are legislated but not others.
All you mentioned can have negative side effects for third parties.
This is legal but I can't legally pay another adult for sex or take drugs that could harm me? And there are many restrictions on gambling. It's weird how some morals are legislated but not others.
Can't make having fun too easy. It ruins the control the elites have over us.
So the definition of being dead is an individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead.
Does this mean the donor was (1) or can the "revive" after (2)?
To be honest, if my only other option was to be buried, I would love to let my brain be connected to some machine that try to keep it as alive-like as possible. Just please don't remove my brain before I'm 1000% certainly dead.
It's not the same as what you suggest, but there's still hope you could regain consciousness, and this is a process that some companies already have infrastructure for. It is pretty expensive though.
Ok, I only skimmed the paper but it seems like all of the "non-local phenomena" in support of their theory are basically psychic powers. Not exactly strong evidence.
You're free to stop there. We can also turn it around, and I can ask you for any paper that details the theory of why the brain should be the location of consciousness. I only gave one example and Wikipedia to start with. There's a lot of material out there if you're (rightfully) skeptical of that one paper. I don't even know what you're refering to as "their theory", as the way I read it, they're basically documenti…
We understand the fundamental laws of physics well enough to say there is not some mysterious soul influencing the brain. Just like we can say that the moon is not made from cheese.
> Modern physics, in other words, provides evidence for what philosophers call “causal closure of the physical”: physical events have purely physical causes (Loewer 1995, Papineau 1995), at least in the regime relevant to human life. Without dramatically upending our understanding of quantum field theory, there is no room for any new influences that could bear on the problem of consciousness.