I've told only a few people about my near death experience, and most of them were polite, but obviously didn't believe a word I was saying. To be honest, I wouldn't believe it either if I had not experienced it myself.
I did not "see" anything other than a bright light, but I was overcome with an incredible feeling that I was in the presence of, and communicating with somebody who was conveying a message of absolute love for, and total understanding of everything that I was. The feeling of euphoria is impossible to fully describe, because of the absoluteness of it.
I wanted to stay where I was. It was the best feeling I'd ever experienced, and I was content. Somehow, I was "shown" some bits of what I had to live for -- people I had not yet met, and amazing places and things that I had not yet seen or done. I don't really remember making a choice to return, but I woke up in a hospital with a broken back and other injuries. I later learned that I had been hit by a car while riding my bicycle, and was given CPR by a passing stranger.
It makes me uncomfortable to talk about this because it's all just so unbelievable, but there it is.
As the years have gone by, I've met the friends and family that I had in my visions, and I've also been to the places and done the things that I saw myself doing in the vision.
My whole perspective on life was changed by this event, and I have no fear of death whatsoever.
BoardsOfCanada 3 hours ago [-]
Probably the contrarian take, but an informed one.
Near death experiences are probably the best way we have to assess the nature of reality.
Now, it's almost impossible to reach people who aren't ready with any arguments, but I'll outline some possible steps for anyone who's on the verge.
- Go to youtube, type in NDE and listen to a few
- Try to come up with a "rational" explanation (hallucinations, the brain dumping DMT, preconceived notions from Hollywood, the general culture and so on)
- Assess whether these make any sense under the conditions that NDEs occur, and scratch the ones that don't. Then watch a few more and you'll have to reject more still.
In particular, what was convincing to me, is how very very similar the cases are and that they happen to tribes living at a stone age technological level with no contact to Hollywood, and that there is a described case from Plato from over 2000 years ago that is identical to modern cases.
In the end, my conclusion is that objective reality has to be partially rejected, and all experience is the combination of some "nature of reality" as interpreted by each individual. This leads to clear contradictions if one assumes that there is one objective reality. Case in point, in NDEs there are a couple of common stages, and experiencers go through some or all of these, most often only some. One is traveling from the location of death to a heavenly realm. For westerners this often is flying through a star trek like hyperspace tunnel, while for stone age people they might be in a canoe that travels by itself to a distant island. So the nature of it is something like being pulled silently without effort towards a point in a manner that isn't part of the experiencer's notion of what's possible, and it is then realized and interpreted by each individual in the closest way that they can relate to.
ericmcer 1 hours ago [-]
I never remotely believed this because I don't even believe in a "me" really.
One hard hit in the head can literally change your personality entirely, then you have alzheimers and all the other degenerative brain diseases that will erase "you". Even if you avoid all that "you" will be wildly different every 15-20 years.
Christianity gets through this by saying you will return to your prime. That just seems kind of childish to me though, like "yeah when you die you and all your friends and family are gonna be 25 and you live in paradise together forever".
How do you resolve the idea of an eternal consciousness with the very real and common occurence of people losing their consciousness while they are still alive?
BobbyTables2 1 hours ago [-]
I wonder if there even is such a thing as “eternal consciousness” the way people assume.
It’s rare for me to remember -aspects of my daily life in dreams.
I would think being dead would be a significant hinderance.
_DeadFred_ 23 minutes ago [-]
Basically if the base reality that we experience through a holographic world/emergent reality has no concept of time, consequence, etc, you have to create a simulation/game with rules that can allow free will to happen, that has a timeline, has consequences. Once setup, those rules apply even if they ruin the simulation experience for some, they are a necessary part of the holographic world/emergent reality serving it's purpose. Sadly, to create an emergent reality that allows free will you have to create a reality that allows suffering and children dying of cancer and Alzheimer's. But the blow to the head/Alzheimers is nothing different than an alcohol haze one night that goes away in the morning. The you in the underlying lower (higher?) real dimensions doesn't change just because you got drunk/alzheimers/hit on the head in the emergent dimensions/reality/holographic world.
Read CS Lewis 'The Problem of Pain' then think about emergent dimensions/holographic worlds being the only way to have our kind of consciousness/self determination/free will/experiential identity if one exists in a underlying dimensional state with no linear time, no physical limitations, etc, and so forth. The emergent reality/holographic world is the 'chess board with clear rules' needed for us to have/experience/pretend to free will from the underlying reality without time or rules. In CS Lewis 'The Problem of Pain', pain sucks, but is needed for this world to do whatever it is supposed to do. Alzheimers, consequences of blows to the head, etc aren't themselves needed but they themselves are emergent from the rules that are needed for 'here' to exist and serve it's purpose.
Not manic. Just not great at communicating these thoughts. Don't lock me up please.
chongli 3 hours ago [-]
If multiple people independently report the same experience (across time and space), isn't this actually evidence of objective reality rather than a refutation of it? It points to some underlying universal structure of our experience as constructed by our brains, which suggests that our brains are part of a mechanistic, external, and therefore objective reality instead of a subjective one (where our own ideas constitute reality).
tsimionescu 3 hours ago [-]
> In particular, what was convincing to me, is how very very similar the cases are and that they happen to tribes living at a stone age technological level with no contact to Hollywood, and that there is a described case from Plato from over 2000 years ago that is identical to modern cases.
This sounds intriguing.
> Case in point, in NDEs there are a couple of common stages, and experiencers go through some or all of these, most often only some. One is traveling from the location of death to a heavenly realm. For westerners this often is flying through a star trek like hyperspace tunnel, while for stone age people they might be in a canoe that travels by itself to a distant island.
Ah, so the similarity is all enitrely in your interpretation of these clearly dissimilar visions.
BoardsOfCanada 2 hours ago [-]
If I listen to 100 NDEs and in 50 they travel through a tunnel like this or somehow go through space, and in 2 from stone age cultures they travel in a manner apt to their everyday experience and it has those things in common I think it's a fine hypothesis that what they have in common is the nature of what's happening. And in 48 they didn't experience this stage.
card_zero 2 hours ago [-]
Have you read any pop neuroscience book? There are common experiences that can be generated by one or another kind of brain-wrong. You sort of acknowledged this already when you mentioned DMT. If you poke somebody in specific parts of the brain you can get illusions of changing size, shadowy figures, mirth, and other delightful errors. We also interpret things very eagerly, like the "night hag" phenomenon where being unable to sense one's own breathing turns into an illusion of something sitting on your chest. That's another worldwide cross-cultural concept, by the way, but there is no night hag, there's just human physiology.
So, bright lights and tunnels. Shared human visual neurological glitches. Heard of "tunnel vision"? That's a real medical condition, which can be caused by blood loss, adrenaline, or low oxygen.
LocalH 2 hours ago [-]
Objective reality exists, but nobody can ever perceive it, at least not while they're perceiving things through the filter of their body
bobbyswiss 1 hours ago [-]
What's realer than reality as it's directly experienced?
What are the unaccountably unlikely commonalities that I should be noticing? Between this and the article, I see only: some kind of colored light, some kind of officiating beings, and a river (A.J.Ayer says he presumably had the Styx in mind, though amusingly in the actual ancient Greek account it's a different river and there's no need to cross it).
BoardsOfCanada 2 hours ago [-]
So it has the same stages as modern NDEs:
- Out of body experience
- Journey through realms
- Bright/universal light
- Life review
- Encounters with spiritual beings
- Reincarnation / life selection
- A message of peace, well-being, and survival of consciousness
I've never heard of life reviews for example outside of NDEs, most of these things are not in the collective unconscious.
card_zero 2 hours ago [-]
These things are not really present, unless you do a lot of generalizing, squinting your eyes, and wishing. Besides which the ancient Egyptians influenced many of our shared tropes. There's that whole bit with weighing the heart while a monster (the Eater of the Dead) sits and watches. The Sumerians have a lot to answer for, too. You may now point to Amazonian tribes, but why shouldn't our tropes go all the way back to a shared past in Africa? Not to mention the convergent evolution of obvious ideas. South America (Maya? I forget) had flood myths of its own, and a world tree.
Yeah, look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths . This does not mean that at some point there was a global flood brought about by a deity in retribution. It just means people throughout time knew the same stories or invented the same stories, and often thought about deities and floods. Similarly with your afterlife tropes. Memes are the freaky thing here.
tsimionescu 2 hours ago [-]
Where is the pressing need to help repair space itself that Ayer reports as such a big part of his own experience? And where in Ayer's experience is this life review, reincarnation, or message of peace?
BoardsOfCanada 2 hours ago [-]
It's obviously impossible to say. Why would there be a life review, reincarnation, or message of peace?
tsimionescu 2 hours ago [-]
You're the one who claimed that we should believe NDEs represent more than hallucinations because they all contain the same elements. I was pointing out that I can see major differences between two of these NDEs we are just discussing, instead of the consistency you were claiming.
card_zero 2 hours ago [-]
Well, the claim is only that several of them contain some of the same elements as others.
twic 1 hours ago [-]
Not long ago, a local mad church put a packet of pamphlets through my door, one of which was this magnificent tale:
Some of those features show up there too. Of course, this comes from a Christian background, and draws on that. But it does have a river, and there's no river in hell in the bible.
booleandilemma 14 minutes ago [-]
Where is that story from? Is George Lennox even a real person?
amelius 3 hours ago [-]
Reminded me of this TED talk of a woman who had a stroke and told about the experience:
> And I look down at my arm and I realize that I can no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can't define where I begin and where I end, because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall.
golly_ned 3 hours ago [-]
Why do those experiences indicate the presence or non-presence of an afterlife?
This claim from Ayer -- how do we make the leap from these experiences existing to being evidence of a life after consciousness?
> On the face of it, these experiences, on the assumption that the last one was veridical, are rather strong evidence that death does not put an end to consciousness
12345678UP 2 hours ago [-]
for some it's impossible to witness death. We get forced to sometimes see someone else's lifeless cask, but our own becomes impossible, as our very own worldline/probability trees branch before witnessing what others see as their objective reality; someone else's death. and this won't make any sense to anyone that doesn't already see this occurring, so it's just like an ouroborus of a string of jokes, each punchline becomes the begining of the next joke.
2 hours ago [-]
olalonde 1 hours ago [-]
> the brain dumping DMT
Why do you exclude this hypothesis? It's well known that some drugs such as DMT do cause very similar hallucinations among people, even across cultures (as is the case with NDE).
colechristensen 26 minutes ago [-]
There's this mushroom Lanmaoa asiatica that causes people to hallucinate hundreds of tiny people running around interacting with the environment. Consistently, across cultures and regions. You eat this mushroom and you're pretty likely to have a very similar hallucination to everybody else who eats this mushroom. Now is there some objective reality of hidden little elves everywhere that only this mushroom unlocks? Or is it a specific physical trigger that when people go through it they have the same sort of experience.
You can have the same question about the near death experiences. Are they experiences of an objective reality somewhere or is it a common physical situation triggering similar experiences across people and cultures.
sleepyguy 47 minutes ago [-]
Taking it to another level, there are several cases where people who weren't dying experienced the NDE (ex: Nurses, loved ones at someones bedside, etc). They actually witness what the dying person might have been experiencing when dying.
throwanem 3 hours ago [-]
A materialist would argue that nothing you describe rules out malfunction in a brain failing rapidly due to oxygen starvation, and that the commonality of experiences is explicable in terms of common failure modes in effectively identical brain architecture. (Just about everyone's visual cortex works about the same, etc.)
I think it's cute how hardcore materialists believe it is even in theory possible to distinguish their position from ideological simulationism. Maybe in a thousand years. Not now. But phenomenology is the name of the philosophical discipline that you are now struggling to recapitulate.
BoardsOfCanada 3 hours ago [-]
So we agree but one point: There are tens of thousands of NDEs happening under monitored conditions (operating tables) when we know for a fact that the brain is out of oxygen and energy according to any know physical (not to mention evolutionary) mechanism, and that has to be explained.
tsimionescu 2 hours ago [-]
If the brain is ever completely inactive (as seen in EEGs) for any length of time, there is no chance of recovery from that state. The body can be kept alive, but the brain is gone and will never have any other activity again.
So, I'm not sure what you mean by "out of oxygen and energy according to any phsysical mechanism" - for any patient who has ever recovered to tell a tale of an NDE, we know for a fact that their brain was constantly producing measurable electrical signals for the entire time.
Swizec 2 hours ago [-]
> NDEs happening under monitored conditions (operating tables)
I had general anesthesia 10 days ago. There was no NDE, felt like they flicked an off switch then turned me back on a few hours later.
They wheeled me from the prep room towards the OR, opened the big door, and then I was in a different room waking up from anesthesia. That’s it.
BobbyTables2 1 hours ago [-]
That’s been my exact experience in each of my 5 occasions.
I also once semi-fainted while standing up. Felt unusually calm and care free as my head bashed against a nearby object. Fortunately it wasn’t serious.
BoardsOfCanada 2 hours ago [-]
Yes they don't happen 100% of the time or even 10%.
throwanem 2 hours ago [-]
You also need to study cellular biology, human physiology, and what actually goes on during anesthesia, of all of which (at least!) you are radically uninformed in a way that renders your line of argument specious beyond recovery into meaningful discussion. Please don't reply to me further on this topic.
BoardsOfCanada 2 hours ago [-]
Ok :D
card_zero 2 hours ago [-]
You think it's cute, do you? But there are endless unfalsifiable and silly alternative explanations for everything. They're distinguished only by being silly. The observation that everything could be a simulation deserves a "so what". Maybe you're the cutie pie.
throwanem 2 hours ago [-]
It means something to you that I should be, eh? I don't really take a position in the matter, but one can't spend all day reading - though feel free to continue flattering my looks here while I do so, of course! Being called cute is a rare pleasure indeed for me, these decades.
adammarples 3 hours ago [-]
Incredibly easy to explain this without trying hard. The subject has some sense of movement forwards, and the brain rationalises it, like we do in dreams, imagining a tunnel or a canoe or whatever familiar thing is associated with that feeling of drifting or flying. So we can conclude that maybe near death experiences cause a feeling of falling or drifting, and is a bit like dreaming - not that objective reality should be rejected.
BoardsOfCanada 2 hours ago [-]
We're talking past each other. The problem isn't coming up with a hypothesis of why experiences differ according to experiences. Start by explaining how there can be any experience at all after an hour without oxygen to the brain. But after that we come to a stage where experiences differ so much that they aren't reconcilable in one objective reality and that's what I tried to address.
majkinetor 1 hours ago [-]
> Start by explaining how there can be any experience at all after an hour without oxygen to the brain.
Some cells are still technically alive after 1 hour mark in the sense that there is no necrosis and cell membrane is still operating. This depends on cell type and nourishment - for example cells that have high amount of CoQ10 can live longer etc.
In any case, brain is definitely NOT 100% dead in a sense that ALL of its cells are necrotic which might explain why it is in a dream like state.
Also, I doubt 1 hour mark is regular thing in NDE.
tsimionescu 2 hours ago [-]
> Start by explaining how there can be any experience at all after an hour without oxygen to the brain.
Besides the clear possibility that the memory forms later, the brains of people who report NDEs have never stopped - there is no report of anyone ever recovering from brain death (as in, from a basically flat EEG).
BoardsOfCanada 2 hours ago [-]
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nemomarx 2 hours ago [-]
How would we determine that the experience happened during that time and not as a memory created when oxygen reached the brain after, or so on? If you assume that narrative memory is a little bit hallucinated (which I think is pretty observable, try dissociating a little and you can experience it) then many options are on the table.
oxag3n 37 minutes ago [-]
Being familiar with Ayer from his Epistemology works, this writeup was unexpected. How could an empiricist write "My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me". It also directly contradicted his stance about metaphycal claims.
slibhb 10 minutes ago [-]
An empiricist could write that with no contradiction if he experienced it, which Ayer did.
I think his conclusion is very reasonable. It's highly likely that NDEs are minds sputtering to a stop. But if you experience one (while your heart has stopped for 4 minutes no less), it seems rational to "slightly" update your priors towards the possibility of some kind of afterlife. At the very least, it may indicate some kind of conscious experience after you're "dead" but before your brain significantly degrades.
That aside, I will say that his experience sounds a lot like a DMT trip. Particularly the sense that "space, like a badly fitting jigsaw puzzle, was slightly out of joint" and the feeling of being in the presence of "the government of the universe".
md224 3 hours ago [-]
The most striking thing to me is that Ayer hopes there isn't life after death.
> My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be. (italics mine)
I do get the sense that many atheists not only reject God & the afterlife but actually don't want there to be a God or an afterlife. (I think Thomas Nagel wrote something along those lines.) I sort of get it but regardless I think it's very interesting.
birdsongs 2 hours ago [-]
I'm just 40, and while I won't go into it, I've lived a very long life so far. An incredible amount of joy, but also grief and pain. Memory for me, when I'm drinking my coffee in the morning, is warm and cozy in a numbing sort of way, but I have to be careful where I walk in it.
I certainly don't wish for death, I still find so much beauty and joy in life, and I still find and experience love. But I don't wish for an afterlife, or prolonged life. If I'm fortunate to live until my natural death, I will welcome it.
Humanity will go on, there are billions of threads of consciousness right now, and I feel so much gratitude that I was and am one of those. I have a lot of comfort in being wrapped and surrounded by those threads, and that they will continue around me when mine frays and ends.
My cannon view is that we're just the universe experiencing itself, and that while my consciousness will end, that universe will go on, my atoms part of it.
card_zero 1 hours ago [-]
One thing I sometimes hope is true, in my materialistic atheistic way, is to do with the problem of sci-fi teleportation. See, if you go through a transporter on Star Trek, you're taken apart and reassembled. This makes people worry, ludicrously, that the reassembled version "isn't really me". You could after all refrain from taking the original apart, and simply duplicate people. Both copies of some guy called Bernard would claim "I am Bernard", and both would be right.
So this makes me think that from moment to moment, as we pass through time at one second per second, it's as if we're being sent through a transporter. That is to say, if in the far future after my death I am reassembled, or even if just a close imitation of me is assembled from whatever data they can get hold of, then that would be no different from me, or Bernard, being brought back to life. "I am Bernard", he would say, and he'd still be right. Of course other Bernard wouldn't get to share his experiences, but so what. My former self can't share my present experiences.
So, why hope for this to happen at all? It has to be that what we're emotionally invested in is not really "continuity of experience", which is a myth, but continuity of ideas. It's nice if those ideas can sit together in the coherent context of a mind. The Woody Allen quote is "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying." But perhaps in fact through your work is good enough, really? Like a close second.
What I mean to say is, I don't so much hope for an afterlife, as to discover that it philosophically doesn't matter anyway. Though I prefer people not dead.
pino999 2 hours ago [-]
It is the safest and easiest solution. You die, nothing happens.
When there is an afterlife or perhaps even eternity, the problems begin.
BobbyTables2 1 hours ago [-]
Definitely!. Hence people must support religious institutions to guide them to the afterlife…
Imagine taking sports coaching from one who never played…
neal_jones 2 hours ago [-]
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2 hours ago [-]
sdevonoes 2 hours ago [-]
religious beliefs aside, there’s something pleasing about living a good life and facing a decent death: closure.
claysmithr 37 minutes ago [-]
except without religious beliefs you cannot objectively define good and bad, it's all just moral relativism.
lapcat 2 hours ago [-]
> I do get the sense that many atheists not only reject God & the afterlife but actually don't want there to be a God or an afterlife.
I feel that eternity in Heaven would actually be Hell, because nothing would matter. No danger, no failure, no challenge, no goals, no purpose. What gives life meaning are mortality, limitations, beginnings and endings, progress.
I recently watched the film "Eternity" on Apple TV, starring Elizabeth Olsen, in which everyone after they die has to choose their own form of afterlife and then stick with it forever. All I could think about was how bored I would eventually get. (The film itself was pretty good, not boring. That's because it had an ending!)
Fiction is ideal for playing out these scenarios. Think also of the film "Highlander", in which the ultimate "prize" of the immortals turns out to be mortality. MacLeod's life had become repetitive, and he couldn't fully invest in it, because he kept losing everyone he loved. They grew old and died, while he lived on and had to keep changing identities. For a while it's a grand adventure... until it isn't anymore.
I can certainly understand wanting to live longer, but eternity is unimaginably long, way too long. I don't think that's something to be desired.
card_zero 1 hours ago [-]
Problems, yes. "Biology is going to kill me soon" shouldn't have to be one of those problems, and in fact I think it makes us all slightly crazy in different ways, from not caring about the future to unscrupulously believing in afterlives.
No, I was disputing "mortality" while agreeing with "challenges", which I've written as problems in the nice sense of "please let me finish my problem". That's some historical figure's alleged last words, I think.
(Edit: probably an embellishment of Archimedes, supposedly saying to the Roman soldier who killed him, "do not disturb my circles!" - not exactly a plaintive attitude about mortality, more just being a grumpy geometrist.)
> McTaggart derived his certainty from his metaphysics, which implied that what we confusedly perceive as material objects, in some cases housing minds, are really souls, eternally viewing one another with something of the order of love.
Maybe I am wrong but isn’t that how shinto perceives the world? That a tree you might chop down will kill a kami who lives there. So our acts of here and now have a much bigger implication on the musubi than on the actual after life.
throwanem 3 hours ago [-]
I don't remember anything like that, but I strongly doubt I was ever in asystole. (I went looking for occurrence rates of spontaneous recovery from that 'flatlined' state, and found only case reports - all nicknaming their subjects "Lazarus...") On the other hand, it sounds like he was a lot better perfused when he lost consciousness than I was by the time I did, so who knows, really?
dv35z 51 minutes ago [-]
I read a book about this called Life After Life, written in the 1970s. A doctor spoke with hundreds of people who experienced Near Death Experiences, and wrote commonalities / patterns that most experienced. Found this absolutely fascinating. Coming from a non-religious background, I found this book somewhat of a brain breaker.
As others mentioned (including @BoardsOfCanada) - search for "NDE" on a video platform, and watch a few. I make no claims to be a professional assessor of truth/lies, but when you watch many of those videos, ask yourself honestly, is this person lying (or rehearsing a staged story)? Additionally, some mention "impossible" information (like an out-of-body experience, where they are able see something outside of the room, which would be impossible for their body to do; or receive/hear information).
What I appreciate about that book is that the doctor (Raymond Moody) doesn't offer judgements or much of his own opinions, but he tries to faithfully retell what the patient experienced.
What's interesting is some of the discussions the patients have with the "luminous being(s)" and souls/spirits/entities on the other side...
They seem to frequently ask questions like, "What did you learn (while on Earth)?" - and there is the implication that our souls are sent to Earth with a specific mission.
The people who experience these NDEs also often say that this other world (spirit/soul world?) feels MORE REAL than the Earth world, and that they report feeling finally "at home".
Other interesting observations - (1) they rarely smell anything in the other world, (2) many report perfect sight / knowledge (for example, can clearly see infinite detail of a mountain range on the horizon), (3) Often hear musical "chimes", (4) the "luminous beings" have a sense of humor, and are not judgemental during the life-review, (5) During the life review, they often get to see the experience from another perspective - for example, during a fight with a sibling, you can see the fight/feelings from the other siblings' perspective, (6) the people often come back with some sort of "gift" / power - for example, the ability to sense other peoples' emotions at a distance (like extreme empathy), or to heal people with touch. (7) Apparently suicide is a big no-no - the people who attempted to kill themselves were essentially "scolded", told that it was a huge mistake - "We" are not supposed to decide who dies, including ourselves - and that we have a mission to carry out, even if the circumstances are difficult. That was a bit shocking to read...
Pretty fascinating stuff.
I personally have not experienced an NDE, but I have spoken to several trusted friends - including a man who drowned as a child, and was brought back to life. He experienced the common "symptoms" of the NDE described in those videos... just the level of detail he can recall from the conversation he had with the "luminous being", and the extreme feeling of "home" and intense love he experienced - he said that since that point, he's not afraid of death at all, and after that experience, he felt strongly driven to become a teacher and help others....
For Ayer similar near death experiences give more evidence for the afterlife. I admit that it seems better than different, but it's still incredibly weak and not unexpected. Dying brain having similar perceptions is not that unexpected. Just like machine elves are when taking DMT.
Ayer makes good points that evidence of dualism does not imply 'spirit' or soul dualism, or existence of a deity.
I011010011 4 hours ago [-]
Things that are worthy of discussion ( such as one in this posting ) rarely get any attention.
adzm 3 hours ago [-]
It would be helpful if the site wasn't down...
I011010011 3 hours ago [-]
I didn't have a problem loading the site. Odd. Try again later or something.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3 hours ago [-]
Is it worthy of discussion because there is something actionable in it?
I011010011 3 hours ago [-]
Yes.
Actionable: To Consider the significance of kindness, compassion, love to and for each other, which world, at large, is missing owing to many factors.
And to consider one's own superficiality and have profound thoughts for others.
tsimionescu 2 hours ago [-]
Why is that tied to some notion of an afterlife? If anything, it seems to me that the reality that this one life is all any of us have should make one care way more for their fragile peers, and for making it the one life they have count. As The Doors once put it, "no eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn".
OutOfHere 3 hours ago [-]
What is of discussion here?:
1. Restaurants should carry an anti-choking device. Too many elderly risk a stroke without it.
2. People often do have a delusion or vision just before death, one that is a product of their own brain, fitting their understanding of the world. I had an incredible vision when I had taken half an oxycodone prescribed for pain.
3. There are more ways of expressing one's belief or disbelief in god besides atheism and agnosticm. Consider "agnostic theism" which means “I believe god exists, but I do not know that with certainty”, also "agnostic atheism" which means “I don't believe in a god but also say it can’t be known.”
As for any genuine otherworldly vision, no, I don't believe that happened here.
vehemenz 3 hours ago [-]
Beyond the usual discussions of atheism and agnosticism, some would maintain none of these positions are possible to hold because they require a prior commitment to realism about ontological questions, and the arguments for realism are uncompelling.
I011010011 3 hours ago [-]
2.
Rendered at 00:10:25 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I did not "see" anything other than a bright light, but I was overcome with an incredible feeling that I was in the presence of, and communicating with somebody who was conveying a message of absolute love for, and total understanding of everything that I was. The feeling of euphoria is impossible to fully describe, because of the absoluteness of it.
I wanted to stay where I was. It was the best feeling I'd ever experienced, and I was content. Somehow, I was "shown" some bits of what I had to live for -- people I had not yet met, and amazing places and things that I had not yet seen or done. I don't really remember making a choice to return, but I woke up in a hospital with a broken back and other injuries. I later learned that I had been hit by a car while riding my bicycle, and was given CPR by a passing stranger.
It makes me uncomfortable to talk about this because it's all just so unbelievable, but there it is.
As the years have gone by, I've met the friends and family that I had in my visions, and I've also been to the places and done the things that I saw myself doing in the vision.
My whole perspective on life was changed by this event, and I have no fear of death whatsoever.
Near death experiences are probably the best way we have to assess the nature of reality.
Now, it's almost impossible to reach people who aren't ready with any arguments, but I'll outline some possible steps for anyone who's on the verge.
- Go to youtube, type in NDE and listen to a few
- Try to come up with a "rational" explanation (hallucinations, the brain dumping DMT, preconceived notions from Hollywood, the general culture and so on)
- Assess whether these make any sense under the conditions that NDEs occur, and scratch the ones that don't. Then watch a few more and you'll have to reject more still.
In particular, what was convincing to me, is how very very similar the cases are and that they happen to tribes living at a stone age technological level with no contact to Hollywood, and that there is a described case from Plato from over 2000 years ago that is identical to modern cases.
In the end, my conclusion is that objective reality has to be partially rejected, and all experience is the combination of some "nature of reality" as interpreted by each individual. This leads to clear contradictions if one assumes that there is one objective reality. Case in point, in NDEs there are a couple of common stages, and experiencers go through some or all of these, most often only some. One is traveling from the location of death to a heavenly realm. For westerners this often is flying through a star trek like hyperspace tunnel, while for stone age people they might be in a canoe that travels by itself to a distant island. So the nature of it is something like being pulled silently without effort towards a point in a manner that isn't part of the experiencer's notion of what's possible, and it is then realized and interpreted by each individual in the closest way that they can relate to.
One hard hit in the head can literally change your personality entirely, then you have alzheimers and all the other degenerative brain diseases that will erase "you". Even if you avoid all that "you" will be wildly different every 15-20 years.
Christianity gets through this by saying you will return to your prime. That just seems kind of childish to me though, like "yeah when you die you and all your friends and family are gonna be 25 and you live in paradise together forever".
How do you resolve the idea of an eternal consciousness with the very real and common occurence of people losing their consciousness while they are still alive?
It’s rare for me to remember -aspects of my daily life in dreams.
I would think being dead would be a significant hinderance.
Read CS Lewis 'The Problem of Pain' then think about emergent dimensions/holographic worlds being the only way to have our kind of consciousness/self determination/free will/experiential identity if one exists in a underlying dimensional state with no linear time, no physical limitations, etc, and so forth. The emergent reality/holographic world is the 'chess board with clear rules' needed for us to have/experience/pretend to free will from the underlying reality without time or rules. In CS Lewis 'The Problem of Pain', pain sucks, but is needed for this world to do whatever it is supposed to do. Alzheimers, consequences of blows to the head, etc aren't themselves needed but they themselves are emergent from the rules that are needed for 'here' to exist and serve it's purpose.
Not manic. Just not great at communicating these thoughts. Don't lock me up please.
This sounds intriguing.
> Case in point, in NDEs there are a couple of common stages, and experiencers go through some or all of these, most often only some. One is traveling from the location of death to a heavenly realm. For westerners this often is flying through a star trek like hyperspace tunnel, while for stone age people they might be in a canoe that travels by itself to a distant island.
Ah, so the similarity is all enitrely in your interpretation of these clearly dissimilar visions.
So, bright lights and tunnels. Shared human visual neurological glitches. Heard of "tunnel vision"? That's a real medical condition, which can be caused by blood loss, adrenaline, or low oxygen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_Er
What are the unaccountably unlikely commonalities that I should be noticing? Between this and the article, I see only: some kind of colored light, some kind of officiating beings, and a river (A.J.Ayer says he presumably had the Styx in mind, though amusingly in the actual ancient Greek account it's a different river and there's no need to cross it).
I've never heard of life reviews for example outside of NDEs, most of these things are not in the collective unconscious.
Yeah, look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths . This does not mean that at some point there was a global flood brought about by a deity in retribution. It just means people throughout time knew the same stories or invented the same stories, and often thought about deities and floods. Similarly with your afterlife tropes. Memes are the freaky thing here.
https://avesselofhonour.com/2023/06/28/48-hours-in-hell/
Some of those features show up there too. Of course, this comes from a Christian background, and draws on that. But it does have a river, and there's no river in hell in the bible.
https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_my_stroke_of_ins...
> And I look down at my arm and I realize that I can no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can't define where I begin and where I end, because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall.
This claim from Ayer -- how do we make the leap from these experiences existing to being evidence of a life after consciousness?
> On the face of it, these experiences, on the assumption that the last one was veridical, are rather strong evidence that death does not put an end to consciousness
Why do you exclude this hypothesis? It's well known that some drugs such as DMT do cause very similar hallucinations among people, even across cultures (as is the case with NDE).
You can have the same question about the near death experiences. Are they experiences of an objective reality somewhere or is it a common physical situation triggering similar experiences across people and cultures.
I think it's cute how hardcore materialists believe it is even in theory possible to distinguish their position from ideological simulationism. Maybe in a thousand years. Not now. But phenomenology is the name of the philosophical discipline that you are now struggling to recapitulate.
So, I'm not sure what you mean by "out of oxygen and energy according to any phsysical mechanism" - for any patient who has ever recovered to tell a tale of an NDE, we know for a fact that their brain was constantly producing measurable electrical signals for the entire time.
I had general anesthesia 10 days ago. There was no NDE, felt like they flicked an off switch then turned me back on a few hours later.
They wheeled me from the prep room towards the OR, opened the big door, and then I was in a different room waking up from anesthesia. That’s it.
I also once semi-fainted while standing up. Felt unusually calm and care free as my head bashed against a nearby object. Fortunately it wasn’t serious.
Some cells are still technically alive after 1 hour mark in the sense that there is no necrosis and cell membrane is still operating. This depends on cell type and nourishment - for example cells that have high amount of CoQ10 can live longer etc.
In any case, brain is definitely NOT 100% dead in a sense that ALL of its cells are necrotic which might explain why it is in a dream like state.
Also, I doubt 1 hour mark is regular thing in NDE.
Besides the clear possibility that the memory forms later, the brains of people who report NDEs have never stopped - there is no report of anyone ever recovering from brain death (as in, from a basically flat EEG).
I think his conclusion is very reasonable. It's highly likely that NDEs are minds sputtering to a stop. But if you experience one (while your heart has stopped for 4 minutes no less), it seems rational to "slightly" update your priors towards the possibility of some kind of afterlife. At the very least, it may indicate some kind of conscious experience after you're "dead" but before your brain significantly degrades.
That aside, I will say that his experience sounds a lot like a DMT trip. Particularly the sense that "space, like a badly fitting jigsaw puzzle, was slightly out of joint" and the feeling of being in the presence of "the government of the universe".
> My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be. (italics mine)
I do get the sense that many atheists not only reject God & the afterlife but actually don't want there to be a God or an afterlife. (I think Thomas Nagel wrote something along those lines.) I sort of get it but regardless I think it's very interesting.
I certainly don't wish for death, I still find so much beauty and joy in life, and I still find and experience love. But I don't wish for an afterlife, or prolonged life. If I'm fortunate to live until my natural death, I will welcome it.
Humanity will go on, there are billions of threads of consciousness right now, and I feel so much gratitude that I was and am one of those. I have a lot of comfort in being wrapped and surrounded by those threads, and that they will continue around me when mine frays and ends.
My cannon view is that we're just the universe experiencing itself, and that while my consciousness will end, that universe will go on, my atoms part of it.
So this makes me think that from moment to moment, as we pass through time at one second per second, it's as if we're being sent through a transporter. That is to say, if in the far future after my death I am reassembled, or even if just a close imitation of me is assembled from whatever data they can get hold of, then that would be no different from me, or Bernard, being brought back to life. "I am Bernard", he would say, and he'd still be right. Of course other Bernard wouldn't get to share his experiences, but so what. My former self can't share my present experiences.
So, why hope for this to happen at all? It has to be that what we're emotionally invested in is not really "continuity of experience", which is a myth, but continuity of ideas. It's nice if those ideas can sit together in the coherent context of a mind. The Woody Allen quote is "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying." But perhaps in fact through your work is good enough, really? Like a close second.
What I mean to say is, I don't so much hope for an afterlife, as to discover that it philosophically doesn't matter anyway. Though I prefer people not dead.
When there is an afterlife or perhaps even eternity, the problems begin.
Imagine taking sports coaching from one who never played…
I feel that eternity in Heaven would actually be Hell, because nothing would matter. No danger, no failure, no challenge, no goals, no purpose. What gives life meaning are mortality, limitations, beginnings and endings, progress.
I recently watched the film "Eternity" on Apple TV, starring Elizabeth Olsen, in which everyone after they die has to choose their own form of afterlife and then stick with it forever. All I could think about was how bored I would eventually get. (The film itself was pretty good, not boring. That's because it had an ending!)
Fiction is ideal for playing out these scenarios. Think also of the film "Highlander", in which the ultimate "prize" of the immortals turns out to be mortality. MacLeod's life had become repetitive, and he couldn't fully invest in it, because he kept losing everyone he loved. They grew old and died, while he lived on and had to keep changing identities. For a while it's a grand adventure... until it isn't anymore.
I can certainly understand wanting to live longer, but eternity is unimaginably long, way too long. I don't think that's something to be desired.
(Edit: probably an embellishment of Archimedes, supposedly saying to the Roman soldier who killed him, "do not disturb my circles!" - not exactly a plaintive attitude about mortality, more just being a grumpy geometrist.)
Maybe I am wrong but isn’t that how shinto perceives the world? That a tree you might chop down will kill a kami who lives there. So our acts of here and now have a much bigger implication on the musubi than on the actual after life.
As others mentioned (including @BoardsOfCanada) - search for "NDE" on a video platform, and watch a few. I make no claims to be a professional assessor of truth/lies, but when you watch many of those videos, ask yourself honestly, is this person lying (or rehearsing a staged story)? Additionally, some mention "impossible" information (like an out-of-body experience, where they are able see something outside of the room, which would be impossible for their body to do; or receive/hear information).
What I appreciate about that book is that the doctor (Raymond Moody) doesn't offer judgements or much of his own opinions, but he tries to faithfully retell what the patient experienced.
What's interesting is some of the discussions the patients have with the "luminous being(s)" and souls/spirits/entities on the other side...
They seem to frequently ask questions like, "What did you learn (while on Earth)?" - and there is the implication that our souls are sent to Earth with a specific mission.
The people who experience these NDEs also often say that this other world (spirit/soul world?) feels MORE REAL than the Earth world, and that they report feeling finally "at home".
Other interesting observations - (1) they rarely smell anything in the other world, (2) many report perfect sight / knowledge (for example, can clearly see infinite detail of a mountain range on the horizon), (3) Often hear musical "chimes", (4) the "luminous beings" have a sense of humor, and are not judgemental during the life-review, (5) During the life review, they often get to see the experience from another perspective - for example, during a fight with a sibling, you can see the fight/feelings from the other siblings' perspective, (6) the people often come back with some sort of "gift" / power - for example, the ability to sense other peoples' emotions at a distance (like extreme empathy), or to heal people with touch. (7) Apparently suicide is a big no-no - the people who attempted to kill themselves were essentially "scolded", told that it was a huge mistake - "We" are not supposed to decide who dies, including ourselves - and that we have a mission to carry out, even if the circumstances are difficult. That was a bit shocking to read...
Pretty fascinating stuff.
I personally have not experienced an NDE, but I have spoken to several trusted friends - including a man who drowned as a child, and was brought back to life. He experienced the common "symptoms" of the NDE described in those videos... just the level of detail he can recall from the conversation he had with the "luminous being", and the extreme feeling of "home" and intense love he experienced - he said that since that point, he's not afraid of death at all, and after that experience, he felt strongly driven to become a teacher and help others....
https://www.amazon.com/Life-After-Bestselling-Investigation-...
Worth checking out, even if just for curiosity / open the mind's sake...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Ayer makes good points that evidence of dualism does not imply 'spirit' or soul dualism, or existence of a deity.
Actionable: To Consider the significance of kindness, compassion, love to and for each other, which world, at large, is missing owing to many factors.
And to consider one's own superficiality and have profound thoughts for others.
1. Restaurants should carry an anti-choking device. Too many elderly risk a stroke without it.
2. People often do have a delusion or vision just before death, one that is a product of their own brain, fitting their understanding of the world. I had an incredible vision when I had taken half an oxycodone prescribed for pain.
3. There are more ways of expressing one's belief or disbelief in god besides atheism and agnosticm. Consider "agnostic theism" which means “I believe god exists, but I do not know that with certainty”, also "agnostic atheism" which means “I don't believe in a god but also say it can’t be known.”
As for any genuine otherworldly vision, no, I don't believe that happened here.