Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 311 posts

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#191

Post by jack_pp »

alok-g wrote: post #176
jack_pp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's important is what we do with the time we have, the ripples we send out into the world. That I think is the true value of our lives

I would like to hear more on this. Am somewhat playing a devil's advocate, but am genuinely unclear too. What's the higher importance of the impact left on the world. As per the comment you replied to, it will ultimately be multiplied to zero for each one of us. That the impact may sustain in the 'living' world feels somewhat like a propagating wave, or may be even a Ponzi scheme. Looking from a grander scheme of thi…

> If our solar system gets destroyed today

That's a useless hypothetical in my book, we have no reason to believe it will be destroyed any time soon and at the rate we're going, assuming we don't destroy ourselves, in another 1000 years we'll have long escaped the potential destruction of our planet or even our solar system. And a thousand years is a very short time "in the grander scheme of things"

I believe the vast majority of people can not really influence events like nuclear wars or any such extinction events so it's pointless to fear or even take into account. So focus on what you can do better, be kinder to your fellow colleagues, neighbours etc. and find problems and try to fix them in a sustainable way. Those things might seem small but they're important too

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#192

Post by d1sxeyes »

ne0flex wrote: post #132
velcrovan wrote: post #104

RadioLab did an episode on this topic “Decoding the Void” in 2014 ( https://www.radiolab.org/episodes/anesthesia ) that, for me, pretty much deconstructed the whole idea of an afterlife in 20 minutes. What happens when we die? People commonly think of this as some kind of unknowable mystery. But people lose consciousness all the time and aren't entering the spirit world when they do so. If you’ve ever awoken from gen…

While the rational side of me thinks that death is probably oblivion, I just don't want to admit it. After a friend of mine passed away, I did a lot of soul searching and basically came to the conclusion that there's nothing after death. It was mentally destructive for me and sent me into a bout of depression. I'd hate to think that we're going through all this just to have your entire life multiplied by 0 at the end…

My take on this is that potentially this is true, but we don't understand the nature of consciousness yet.

I prefer to think that there is something beyond a specific configuration of molecules that creates consciousness, but I am unable to understand how that would be able to exist within an individual.

However, I can envision a 'plane' - not a plane of individual consciousnesses, but a field, similar to gravity and electromagnetism etc., and where it is concentrated densely, it creates an individual 'well' of consciousness. When an individual dies, it is my belief that the 'well' ceases to exist, and whatever made up that individual continues to exist as part of the field.

I've got absolutely nothing to support this idea beyond speculation, but it brings me comfort to think that just as though the matter and energy that formed myself and my loved ones exists only as part of a much larger ecosystem of matter and energy, and once our bodies are nothing more than cold soil, our consciousness also becomes part of a much larger ecosystem.

They say that a million atoms that are currently in my body today were also part of Jesus' body. Similarly, I imagine that in 2000 years, parts of my consciousness will also be part of others' consciousnesses.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#193

Post by simondw »

simonh wrote: post #174
foobarian wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I get to keep the qualia yes absolutely.

The copy would keep all your memories and would experience qualia, the question is, is it you? After all, your body was torn apart to extract the information to build the new one. Bear in mind qualia are instantaneous, you don't keep them, only memories of them. Sorry, I added the example of the SF story while you were replying to my post. In that story now there's two of the same person walking about, both of whom t…

> Is it really the same consciousness though?

And to push it further, in what sense is each moment's consciousness the same as the previous?

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#194

Post by mariodiana »

simonh wrote: post #164
foobarian wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concluded that, with high probability, there is life after death. Simple: 1. Current life is clearly possible (cogito ergo sum etc). 2. When this one ends, statistically it's inevitable there will be another one. See e.g. Boltzmann brain [1]. The pickle is that the timespan between 1 and 2 could be very long. But since you're not aware of it that doesn't matter. Also, the other pickle is you won't remember it, and…

That's just a copy of you though. It's not you. If I offered to teleport you to work every morning, super convenient and free, but the teleporter destroys your body and creates a new identical copy at the other end every time, would you use it? There's an SF story where someone invents a teleporter, and it becomes very popular, but then one of them goes wrong and doesn't destroy the original body.

A variation on this story was the plot of the very first Star Trek novel: Spock Must Die!

(I think there is a beaten up copy buried in my old closet at my mother's house, from when I was a boy.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock_Must_Die!

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#195

Post by dsego »

pavlov wrote: post #159
dsego wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of NDE reports to keep your hopes up. Unless the whole reincarnation trap and erasing memories is real, that would suck.

How are near-death experiences proof of anything else than brain activity when in a critical state but not yet dead? IMO it's like saying "exception handlers are proof that Unix processes can't be terminated."

I think you can find stories of patients who have had out of body experiences when there was no brain activity. Not sure how valid those are, but still gives me pause.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#196

Post by labrador »

alok-g wrote: post #183
labrador wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like [citation needed] I used to have a severe drug and alcohol problem. I once drank a bunch of beers and took 3 or 4 times the recommended dose of Ativan. I woke up 24 hours later from a blackout and discovered in that time I had walked to the store and bought more beer and some snacks. I had absolutely no memory of it. So I'm going to say…

Your experiences only tell you that those were like switching the memory recorder off. It's unclear to me yet how you are able to compare it negatively to the experience of dying.

> compare it negatively to the experience of dying

I'm not sure what you mean by this. My point was I was anesthetized but managed to go to the store, buy things and make it back, something dead people aren't able to manage last time I checked.

Like Nicola Tesla, I believe my brain is a receiver like a radio and I actually exist in a cloud of consciousness that we all exist in, so I don't have as many negative feelings about dying that a lot of people seem to have (people who believe they cease to exist)

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#197

Post by EarthLaunch »

alok-g wrote: post #176
jack_pp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's important is what we do with the time we have, the ripples we send out into the world. That I think is the true value of our lives

I would like to hear more on this. Am somewhat playing a devil's advocate, but am genuinely unclear too. What's the higher importance of the impact left on the world. As per the comment you replied to, it will ultimately be multiplied to zero for each one of us. That the impact may sustain in the 'living' world feels somewhat like a propagating wave, or may be even a Ponzi scheme. Looking from a grander scheme of thi…

That is a great way of describing that situation. Thank you for that.

The answer to a lot of these questions seems to be "we don't know". In our age, there's a cultural trend of pretending we know things, or that everything is knowable. Of course, a lot of things aren't knowable. In actual reality, we function while not knowing. Uncertainty is the nature of existence. Practically every decision and experience is loaded with uncertainty. Just as there's no absolute-reference-point (relativity), there's no absolute-knowledge-point, and that's normal.

In this thread, we are making guesses about the purpose of...well, anything. But the reality is we will never know. Or more: We don't even know whether we will ever know.

Not knowing, for me, is comforting. I like the mystery of the universe. There are so many unknowns; many unimaginable, even magical, things are possible. That's the experience a child has. It carries a sense of wonder.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#198

Post by fluoridation »

stephen_g wrote: post #136
velcrovan wrote: post #104

RadioLab did an episode on this topic “Decoding the Void” in 2014 ( https://www.radiolab.org/episodes/anesthesia ) that, for me, pretty much deconstructed the whole idea of an afterlife in 20 minutes. What happens when we die? People commonly think of this as some kind of unknowable mystery. But people lose consciousness all the time and aren't entering the spirit world when they do so. If you’ve ever awoken from gen…

That doesn’t really make much sense to me… Seems more like a category error than anything - surely anyone who believes in any kind of spiritual afterlife would expect that death on a spiritual level is something much more than simply losing consciousness? Especially if some kind of omniscient deity is believed to be involved, why would such an entity perform any kind of transference into a spiritual realm when you we…

No, the real question is, if the mind can exist independently of the body (and the brain), why does consciousness stop temporarily during certain phases of sleep? If the mind can go on even when the body dies, then it stands to reason that the brain being unconscious should pose even less of an obstacle.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#199

Post by EarthLaunch »

ne0flex wrote: post #170
jck wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some would argue the exact opposite - that the ephemeral nature of existence makes being alive that much more special. That our finite existence here is a gift to treasure and enjoy and not just something you tolerate while you wait for the "real thing"(eternal existence in heaven or whatever)

I don't necessarily view life as a toleration of living and waiting until death, o hope for a "real thing" after death. I'm more hoping for something along of the lines of a "next phase" like transition from school life to working life. The idea the equation of experiences and knowledge if your life ends with an ...)*0 is just depressing. I'd like to continue to build on my life experiences and reconnect with loved o…

It's not that life ends in a *0 - it's more that we don't get to know what effect our life has. The not-knowing is the hard part. But a little imagination is all it takes to see that life could have some undiscovered long term effect.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#200

Post by hacker-gene »

stephen_g wrote: post #136
velcrovan wrote: post #104

RadioLab did an episode on this topic “Decoding the Void” in 2014 ( https://www.radiolab.org/episodes/anesthesia ) that, for me, pretty much deconstructed the whole idea of an afterlife in 20 minutes. What happens when we die? People commonly think of this as some kind of unknowable mystery. But people lose consciousness all the time and aren't entering the spirit world when they do so. If you’ve ever awoken from gen…

That doesn’t really make much sense to me… Seems more like a category error than anything - surely anyone who believes in any kind of spiritual afterlife would expect that death on a spiritual level is something much more than simply losing consciousness? Especially if some kind of omniscient deity is believed to be involved, why would such an entity perform any kind of transference into a spiritual realm when you we…

I'm sure this is well-thought and serious response, but I thought it was pretty funny. Why indeed, although I'm pretty sure most folks in psychedelic (shroom or DMT) would have sworn they're in the spiritual realm and that an omniscient deity deigned to commune with them.
Post reply on HN