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Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

nautil.us

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Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#201

Post by keymon-o »

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…

Not the guy you were replying to. Why are we assuming any of the impact would be a drive to live and should be of importance to anyone?

Isn't the reason why we live just steering through the unknown and finding what will happen next. Some do more and some do less to affect it, but people usually just wonder what will happen tommorow, what will be in a year, some what will be in 50 years.

We only want to do something impactful when we want to experience the consequences in the future.

I think the not-knowing is what drives us to live. The same thing why we await death so peacefully. It's really the gate we don't know anything about and we just await to sail in.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#202

Post by mitchdoogle »

alok-g wrote: post #181
pavlov wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

+1 The default assumption should be that NDEs are hallucinations in a brain moving towards dysfunction.

The interesting thing about them is similarity across time and cultures.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#203

Post by EmilyHughes »

e_i_pi_2 wrote: post #142
EmilyHughes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The radio-receiver metaphor doesn't go far enough as it still assumes a somewhat physical brain, but it helps at first untangeling yourself from materialism. If reality is nothing but a dream it would be no problem to dream up a brain that modulates the dream-content if it is manipulated. - Taking red paint and spraying it over your wall will modulate the dream in such that the wall appears red. - Taking a hammer and…

I think it's fair to say we do know that we have a somewhat physical brain. Even if it's part of a dream then our definition of "physical" would be scoped to that dream and still be accurate

It's really not the same thing, its the complete opposite. It's brain->consciousness vs. consciousness->brain

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#204

Post by a9h74j »

labrador wrote: post #173
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…

> 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…

Aren't paralysis, pain suppression, and amnesia somewhat separately controlled by different medications in anesthesia?

You hope you go under fully.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#205

Post by tlonny »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #192
ne0flex wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've thought the exact same thing!!!

Consciousness is just the trapping of a pocket of some otherworldly field by certain configurations of matter and energy (i.e. a living human brain).

Dying liberates our pocket of consciousness, allowing it to recombine with the free floating consciousness in the universe.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#206

Post by nickjj »

lisper wrote: post #166
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…

One could argue the exact opposite: the fact that you wake from anesthesia (and sleep) with your identity intact indicates that it still exists even during these periods of unawareness. So if your identity can be restored after sleep and anesthesia, why not after death as well? (For the record: I'm totally with you that there is no life after death. All I'm saying is it's not a slam-dunk, and it is particularly not a…

> So if your identity can be restored after sleep and anesthesia, why not after death as well?

I don't know the low level details about how the brain works but...

When you're sleeping and are under anesthesia your brain is still an organ that's alive. Your body as a whole exists and is functioning.

I don't think this can applied to death if our definition of death is that your skin, organs and cells decompose into nothingness relatively quickly. Over time you'll reduce into a pile of bones. Your brain, heart, lungs and everything else is long gone.

Your identity can only be restored at this point if you believe your identity is fully detached from your brain, in which case then you may believe your identity will continue to exist in an unknown state that as far as I know has never been measured or confirmed in human history. That is of course where lots of folks have different opinions.

I'm not here to sell anyone on my opinion but I have been under IV based anesthesia before. It's a legit pause button on what we perceive as our memory or consciousness. You drift into sleep within seconds and wake up as if nothing ever happened, then feel a little groggy along with deal with whatever side effects you were put under for and your doctor will tell you what you were responding to requests during the surgery which means you were able to do things like rest your arm in this position or look to the left, etc..

But the takeaway there is your memory has a gap that can't be accounted for. If your identity is composed of your memory and anesthesia is a combination of drugs that affects chemicals in your body to alter your brain into not remembering things then we've scientifically proven your memory is directly tied into your body (brain included), otherwise if it weren't then "you" wouldn't have been paused right?

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#208

Post by labrador »

a9h74j wrote: post #204
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…

Aren't paralysis, pain suppression, and amnesia somewhat separately controlled by different medications in anesthesia? You hope you go under fully.

Yes, that's what I found so fascinating about combining drugs. Nitrous oxide and opiates for example (caution: nitrous is a fire accelerant and what killed Tony Hsieh [1]). I was able to achieve a state similar to hypnagogia [2]. My only point in commenting is that anesthesia is not like being dead, as far as I know - nobody knows what being dead is like. I'm old so my time is approaching. I look at it like my last big trip. Who knows what will happen!

[1] https://www.thewrap.com/zappos-founder-tony-hsieh-surrounded...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#209

Post by alok-g »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #202
alok-g wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 The default assumption should be that NDEs are hallucinations in a brain moving towards dysfunction.

The interesting thing about them is similarity across time and cultures.

Why is the similarity interesting? Isn't that rather expected, being about aspects of the brain, as opposed to that of the times or cultures?

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#210

Post by fipar »

ColanR wrote: post #113
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…

I think that's why sleep has been called the 'little death' since ancient times. In a sense, you die every time you sleep, and wake up a slightly different person. Edit: ya'll have dirty minds. Homer refers to 'sleep as the brother of death' in the Illiad. Apparently Buddha said something similar too, though I can't find a source. Edit2: just going to leave you with this: "each day is a little life: every waking and…

The Schopenhauer quote reminded me of Saucer-like by Sonic Youth. I always found this line beautiful and now wonder if Lee borrowed the idea from Schopenhauer or if it's just a coincidence:

"Every day is just another breath, every night another little death"

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