Awareness at Death

https://community.macmillanlearning.com/t5/talk-psych-blog/awareness-at-death/ba-p/19410

by anigbrowl • 3 years ago

156 171 3 years ago

community.macmillanlearning.com

Whew, glad this dodged the "woo". I've seen similar reports like this, that fail to detect any parapsychological assertions. I often wonder if people who have these experiences have ever done hallucinogens. I have a feeling that if someone has previously experienced the flimsy nature of perceived reality, they wouldn't be so quick to ascribe near-death experiences to something supernatural.

aradox663• 3 years ago

There are many NDE experiences who have experience with psychedelics and discuss the comparison! As far as I've seen they are more or less unanimous is asserting a categorical difference, but I haven't seen done any systematic research or anything.

corry• 3 years ago

I agree - it always just sounds like a heavy psychedelic experience like 5-meo or high-doses of mushrooms etc.

But then again, part of the beauty of the psychedelic realization of the 'flimsy nature of perceived reality' is also realizing that our non-intoxicated / non-NDE mental state is also not necessarily 'true reality' either.

So IMO still plenty of room for ghosts in the machines :)

OfSanguineFire• 3 years ago

Considering that a popular hallucinogen today, DMT (with or without the ayahuasca ritual), commonly leaves users with the conviction that the drug really opened a portal to another dimension inhabited by godlike entities, and didn’t just scramble their synapses like e.g. LSD – I think that the experience you suggest wouldn’t necessary dissuade people from reaching for a supernatural explanation.

demondemidi3• 3 years ago

Ahh good point. I'm from a much older generation and the new drugs are outside my experience if they really provide that kind of vibe.

thelittleone• 3 years ago

I've had several NDEs and also worked with plan medicines (facilitating and dieting in the amazon) for close to 10 years.

In my experience there's a very different feeling between a perceived reality and an NDE vision (or similar visions that cut through the illusory nature of reality).

demondemidi3• 3 years ago

I had three NDEs well. I found my NDEs to be more like dreams. Very relaxing dreams.

npteljes• 3 years ago

I agree with this take. For many, it seems like that their NDE was also their first psychedelic experience. So then the two is conflated.

hyggetrold• 3 years ago

I had an English teacher in high school who had a near death experience during a surgery. His description of the experience tracks with what's in the article - floating above the body, a tremendous feeling of peace and acceptance, and the feeling of being drawn towards a bright light.

I can't say I'm not afraid of death but it's nice to hear stories like these from folks that help lessen that fear. :)

jdthedisciple2• 3 years ago

Well - not to increase your fear of death - but, presumably your English teacher is still alive, so his experience is wholly distinct from actual death.

tasty_freeze• 3 years ago

Obviously, I can't say what your teacher experienced. But think about this. His brain was going through a traumatic experience of some kind, presumably at least low oxygen and a accumulation of cellular waste products, such as CO2, due to lack of blood flow. After he was resuscitated, his now functioning brain was left to make narrative sense out of what it had experienced.

How much of that was was after the fact reconstruction and how much was actual experience? In the same way, our brain doesn't notice the visual blind spot and just assumes that whatever is there is consistent with its context, even though there is nothing it can experience there.

303uru• 3 years ago

The fact that we can induce out of body experiences with drugs that appear to exactly match lends credence to this idea.

dheera• 3 years ago

I've had a couple of near death experiences and I can say yes to everything turning bright and white but not "being drawn towards" it.

katmannthree• 3 years ago

Personal experience corroborates. The last embers of self fade away in a place far too narrow to fit anything but that overwhelming peace.

It's a difficult subject though, the fear of death underpins a significant portion of life (see terror management theory for that idea taken to the extreme). I don't know the value of trying to undermine it at scale.

nytesky• 3 years ago

I try to imagine life before I was born, and that doesn't seem so bad, so i assume worst case that's what death will be like.

The moments before, yeah who knows...

ericmay5• 3 years ago

I find little comfort in this myself because it’s not the fear of being dead - I almost certainly won’t have a self to experience anything but it is the time leading up to this point when one has to contemplate finite existence that I find terror in the loss of everything and everyone I cherish.

As I recently lost someone close and spent a lot of time by their side, including taking them to appointments and such, the loss of ability and agency associated with various cancers and diseases is also quite scary.

Many times I’ve heard Sam Harris discuss the topic and the topic of meditation and one thing he mentions is taking joy in that the current experience, whether that is dinner with friends or doing a push-up may be the last time you ever have that experience. While I appreciate that one should focus on the moment, I’ve unfortunately found myself doing my best not to “take time to reflect” because the reflection is a reminder of loss and not an inspiration to enjoy the moment.

swayvil• 3 years ago

Aleister Crowley offered a technique for remembering past lives.

When you find yourself half asleep, and that dreamy fuzzy place, try to remember back as far as you can.

With practice you'll remember further and further back. And eventually you'll remember before the time of your birth.

Past lives and such

altruios• 3 years ago

there is a book, dead men can't complain, by Peter Clines.

In it there is a story about someone meeting a creature through near death experiences... It does not go well. The moments before death are the most terrifying.

sbjs4• 3 years ago

It's a logical fallacy to say that a common experience is the only experience, and that fear therefore should be lessened. Perhaps the fear is there for good reason, and perhaps there is a soul and there is moral judgment at death and perhaps our moral character is sealed in stone at death, whether good or bad. Can't rule these out because lots of NDEs say it's a peaceful experience.

lawlessone3• 3 years ago

Well the fear is evolved. Outside of action hero movies things that don't adequately fear dying probably reproduce less. Except the honey badger.

AndrewKemendo5• 3 years ago

Are you familiar with Russell’s teapot?

I question why such horrors were claimed in the first place

nonameiguess• 3 years ago

I'd like to see a study such as that described but not limited to Americans. See what people experience when you cut across cultures and whatever expectations of what death is supposed to be like are less similar.

My wife had a near-death experience about seven years back and she described it to me later, saying there was indeed a tunnel, but it was filled with cartoon Satans holding dildos and our cat was there beckoning her to come. It seems like this is almost a kind of Rorschach test of whether you're a Christian, a foxhole atheist who deep down wants there to be a Christian-like afterlife, or an honest-to-god true nonbeliever.

It also recalls to me the first time I had a true night error experience. I'd been tremendously into UFO lore and alien abduction scenarios as a teenager thanks to the X-Files, so had read up so much on some of the possible explanations that I'd had it drilled into me by then that night terrors were one possible explanation, and probably similarly for experiences people had of things like succubi in centuries past. Then when it happened to me, I did indeed wake up totally paralyzed and my bed was surrounded by ghostly alien-looking figures. But I'd read so much about it at that point that I knew exactly what was happening, knew it wasn't really aliens, and didn't even really find it scary so much as frustrating because I could neither move nor fully wake up.

nivanson• 3 years ago

Your experience is called sleep paralysis. I get it every now and then, often with my face down in the pillow. Not dead yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

Beijinger• 3 years ago

This sounds odd. I always thought, death is like being on vacation with some Germans.

Subdivide8452• 3 years ago

That’s the warm feeling of acceptance.

buildsjets• 3 years ago

Rosencrantz: Do you think Death could possibly be a boat?

Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is "not." Death isn't. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not be on a boat.

Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats.

Guildenstern: No, no... What you've been is not on boats.

surfsvammel• 3 years ago

The brain is a strange thing. Perception and experience is very difficult to wrap one's head around.

I have fainted several times, for different reasons. Often in medical settings but also in other settings. Often when I wake up I am in a state where I feel like I’ve been gone for hours, it feels like I’ve been basically dreaming the equivalent of a full length movie, when in reality I’ve been out for maybe a minute.

It’s strange. It seems impossible to decide what I actually experienced and what I, after the fact, believe I experienced.

I reason about the “life flashes before my eyes” concept similarly. I believe in fact it doesn’t, that a persons brain just makes one believe that has happened, after the fact. But. What do I know.

mongol• 3 years ago

I have fainted twice. The first time, I cannot have been unconscious more than max 5 minutes, probably quite a bit less. But it felt like waking up well rested after a long nights good sleep. But I was very fortunate. I was very close to have hit my neck in a table when falling backwards. Then I most likely would never have woken up.

DougN72• 3 years ago

I experienced the “life flashing before my eyes” once. It was a situation where I thought I was about to die. It was like a very high speed real of all my memories playing. I was amazed (while it was happening) that it was happening just like I’d heard about - so at least in my opinion it wasn’t an invented memory later. Of course I might say that even it was. My theory is the mind was desperately trying to find a similar situation as a hint of how to get out of the current situation, but it’s just a guess. I lived :)

verteu2• 3 years ago

Amazing -- could you describe it a bit more?

monero-xmr• 3 years ago

I almost died at 10 years old from choking. I had some of my life replay like a PowerPoint floating above my vision, where each would float and fade in from the left in a cinematic vignette, then float to the right and fade out as the next came in. I had a distinct sense that I was about to die, and my overwhelming feeling was “wow totally lame I can’t believe I’m dying of choking”. Then a soda was given to me and it dissolved the blockage.

I am religious. I believe in life after death of some sort. I don’t see any evolutionary purpose for seeing a life review before death. I believe the creator made the universe and we have a purpose within it, even after death.

taberiand4• 3 years ago

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 experience a year ago would feel just as real as the memory created a year ago - probably even more so, given how fresh it would be.

Everything I read about near death experiences suggests to me that it's a brain making things up, coupled with more stimuli being processed by the "dead" patient's brain than people assume is possible - accounting, I think, very well for the "things the patient could not have known".

There is no life after death, and there is no existence separate to the body - before our birth we were not; now we are; at some point, we won't be again.

bumby6• 3 years ago

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 around doubting that others have subjective experience.

saulpw• 3 years ago

There is experience after your before-birth, though; how do you know there won't be another experience after your death? Maybe it takes a trillion trillion years, and the collapse and rebirth of the entire universe; but all that would happen in subjectively no time at all.

lawlessone3• 3 years ago

That is a bit biased too. We don't know what the people actually dead experienced.

myheadasplode2• 3 years ago

I encourage everyone interested to check out Dr. Bruce Greyson's book After. It's a scientific look at various NDE cases. This study mentions patients being unable to identify images on an ipad, but the book mentions other cases where patients were indeed able to describe imagery they wouldn't have otherwise been able to observe. I find NDEs to be a real frontier of science, no matter what's actually happening - whether it's hallucination or real consciousness outside of the body (e.g. nonduality, Advaita, etc). Fun stuff!

doctorhandshake2• 3 years ago

Can you say more about how advaita / nonduality are related to this? Still struggling to get my head around those ideas.

myheadasplode2• 3 years ago

Me too, my friend (although a hardcore nonduality person would say you don't get your head around the ideas so much as experience them directly).

This is all anecdotal but a lot of NDE/OOB experiencers describe feelings of oneness and a singular connection with all matter and beings that they gain upon "leaving" the body and lose upon re-entering it. A lot of modern day non-dual seekers similarly describe their locus of perception post-awakening as being distributed through the entirety of the room that they're in as opposed to just the spot behind their eyes. Even MPSimmons' description of his experience in another comment mirrors what teachers like Angelo Dilullo (himself an anesthesiologist) describe.

In other words, nonduality says that there's just one consciousness/point of view that we falsely interpret as fragmented (ie mine, yours, the surgeon's, the table's, the chair's). People who report NDEs/OOBs use language that suggests the same.

In a very non-woo way, I think nondual perception and this line of experience is truly fascinating and I wish there were more scientific resources devoted to its study.

mike_hock3• 3 years ago

book mentions other cases where patients were indeed able to describe imagery they wouldn't have otherwise been able to observe

Quite an extraordinary claim, any evidence of this?

aradox663• 3 years ago

The Parnia study is the most systematic effort to date to establish highly rigorous evidence for this phenomenon.

bamazizi• 3 years ago

The sample pool is relatively small for such a research.

At first I thought this is more about a study or glimpse into the other side but it's about "how dead is a person really?".

Awareness of death? No!, but maybe non-functional brain where the sensory data is no longer being processed.

dvas• 3 years ago

Always wondered if the likes of DMT or trace amounts of it contribute to these experiences similar to how adrenaline is produced during fight/flight response.

Could it be possible that the brain sensing no more blood is being supplied then triggers a mechanism to release this chemical (and in what quantities)? Wildly speculating as a layman, however, maybe there is a link between dream states / DMT production/synthesis and these experiences which are yet to be explored further.

fhqwhgads• 3 years ago

This is totally a thing!

https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploa...

https://analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/do...

mike_hock3• 3 years ago

It's interesting that the neuroprotective chemicals also happen to result in a pleasant feeling, as there would have been no evolutionary pressure whatsoever to make a physiological state that's almost exclusively experienced just before death feel like anything in particular. Anything from bliss to agonizing pain to nothing would have been equally viable.

cypherpunks012• 3 years ago

I feel like I'm missing something with the purpose of the recall accuracy study.

Third, the study enabled an unprecedented objective test of survivors’ recall accuracy. Many have wondered: Have those who recall death experiences—even of happenings during the resuscitation—experienced hallucinations, such as commonly reported with oxygen deprivation or psychedelic drugs? Or are their out-of-body reports of cardiac arrest events factual and verifiable?

How does the ability to recall and report an apple, pear or banana confirm/deny whether the persons have experienced a hallucinogenic event or not?

jdthedisciple2• 3 years ago

The point being (as far as I understand) if, during the period tested for recall, the brain was dead, yet recall was successfull, it would challenge the brain-mind science (i.e. "no brain, no mind")

IOW successful recall would highly suggest "out of body" experience / "mindfulness" despite lack of brain activity.

ericmay5• 3 years ago

Also wouldn’t the real test be to turn the tablet upward so that it shows various images and if you really are floating above everyone and looking down you’d be able to see it?

ramenmeal• 3 years ago

I had the same question. I assume this was to test if the following experience was based on real events, or imagined.

“I was high up in the ceiling of the ward looking down upon the bed.” “I could see the doctors and nurses working over me.” “I perceived and saw everything around me, like in 360 degrees.”

cypherpunks012• 3 years ago

I perceived and saw everything around me, except for the banana! : )

elil17• 3 years ago

First, most of the 53 survivors initially flat-lined on the EEG, but, with continued CPR, recovered brain activity up to 60 minutes later.

Good lord that's a long time. Does this mean that if I'm performing CPR, I should keep going for 61 minutes? Longer?

Kalkaline• 3 years ago

That's a complicated question and answer with a lot of variables. Are we talking about gam-gam with multi-organ failure on a mechanical ventilator who has had chronic pain for years and just prayed to Jesus to send her home? Or are we talking about a 20 something athlete who just collapsed on the field of play and received immediate attention? Because both of those get different answers.

intangible• 3 years ago

It's difficult to say if the person is recoverable, but as long as you continue chest compressions without major interruptions, some blood will continue to circulate and should mostly stave off irreversible brain damage. Even without rescue breaths, there's a massive benefit https://hsi.com/blog/are-rescue-breaths-necessary-during-cpr

yencabulator6• 3 years ago

A medical doctor friend some 30 years back said patients coming back to consciousness after reaching the hospital after 45 minutes of CPR definitely did happen.

He also said that if you enter the hospital on a stretcher, you're most likely also leaving on a stretcher...

The chance of 45+ minutes of CPR allowing someone to recover to even near normal health is tiny. The right question to ask is, do you care enough to cling onto that tiny hope? As in, is it your child or loved one? (Or, is it your job to administer CPR while the patient is being transported to a hospital...)

Zee38484• 3 years ago

As patients underwent CPR, a tablet computer displayed one of ten visual images
During 5 minutes of the CPR, patients also were repeatedly exposed through the headphone audio to the names of 3 fruits

I think this type of experiment could be harmful to patients.

Human brain consumes oxygen at varied rate. It consumes more oxygen under stress. Natural body reaction is to pass out, to preserve limited oxygen reserves in blood and tissue. Interfering or preventing person from loosing consciousness, will deplete oxygen supply faster, and may cause permanent brain damage sooner.

I have no evidence for this claim, just experience from yoga and diving.

clnq2• 3 years ago

It’s not enough to make a tangible difference. CPR isn’t close to ideal blood flow, and resuscitation generally fails. Movies paint a picture that it almost always succeeds, but it is closer to the opposite. Then, it’s possible to argue that whether the patient hears resuscitation being done to them or fruit names doesn’t matter much.

In the end, the depth of chest compressions in CPR in millimeters probably has a bigger effect on tissue death. But it’s very difficult to know what’s the ideal depth of a chest compression for each person in such a granular way, and it’s difficult for humans to do them so precisely. So it’s all rather imprecise.

The likelihood of a patient living goes from near 0% to perhaps 20% or 30% when they are resuscitated. But even that depends on very many things. No one can account for things like 1% or 0.1% tissue death in the process. The process is far too brute and imprecise.

This is my medschool exp although I didn’t go on to become a doctor or resuscitate anyone beyond simulations.

MilStdJunkie2• 3 years ago

"It's like a labyrinth you can't see, innit? And by the time - heeheehee, by the time, heehee - by the time - you can see it, it's too late. There's no way out"[1]

The phrase "invisible labyrinth" describes perfectly the relationship of the self inside the complexity of the human brain. When the body tries, in drips and drops, to save the organism, parts of the resource-hungry labyrinth are taken apart like a travelling circus, to put those hands to more important work. But the circus is our mind, its sense of self is rendered by this disassembly, and then it senses no more.

Sometimes, though, returning to full consciousness, the mind is forced to fill in those existential gaps. We experience an extremely tiny simulacra of this phenomenon upon waking from deep sleep. What's really remarkable is that people tend to fill in the gaps[2] in extraordinarily similar ways. This is powerful but informal evidence that the mechanisms of consciousness might be paradoxically quite simple, perhaps nothing more than a consistent framework for the internal simulation of environments. Layer enough sims, you get an emergent evolutionary impulse to maintain internal narrative.

I'm no scientist - not even particularly clever by HN standards - but figuring this particular widget out will be the bridge to AGI. Multimodal corpus are steps in this direction, but corpus needs to be responsive for this to work.

It would be humorous, but not at all surprising, if human AGI requires both simulated sex and death. No free lunches, I suppose - you want the behavior, you have to pay these weird taxes. I believe that was Oscar Isaac's rationale for giving Eve sex stuff in Ex Machina, although it was hard to believe anything he said given that everything about his character made my skin try to crawl off my body.

[1] Apologies to "In the Walls", Book 5 of Providence by Alan Moore. Do you like H.P. Lovecraft? Do you like comic books? What are you doing reading the internet? Go read this. It's Moore's career best - I'll die on that hill - and Jacen Burrows is knocking it way way way out of the park, as well. The last book feels a little meh, an effort to tie together the other Mythos Trilogy books, which are inferior in every way. It could have done without it. But it's finding a streak of white in a perfect chocolate mousse.

[2] Barring damage, upon which the brain does REALLY crazy things to fill in the gaps. GPT4, on its best days, reminds me of talking with patients that have had some hippocampal-adjacent cerebral damage. But the human brain - and body! - has far, FAR more tricks than a text-trained 'net . .

Nextgrid2• 3 years ago

you get an emergent evolutionary impulse to maintain internal narrative.

I suppose it's just an implementation detail that it works for near-death experiences?

I can't see it being "intentionally" evolved, first because a large (most?) number of NDEs actually make people less afraid of death (which evolution should technically be selecting against), and also because until modern medicine/resuscitation, the NDE behavior was very unlikely to change the evolutionary outcome of an individual since if they get into a stage when they're having an NDE, actual death would always follow, thus the evolutionary fate of the individual is already sealed.

MilStdJunkie2• 3 years ago

The internal narrative is important, but yeah, the NDE is just a side effect of trying to maintain that narrative when the stage falls to pieces around you.

We hold onto that narrative of self through some astonishing events. Instead of "oh, the visual cortex is dying, so it's trying to see through the other sensory systems, triggering memories", we have a white tunnel narrative[1], but in the white tunnel our persona remains intact. We don't need to start simulating the outcomes of having our simulation / sensory system fall apart - we can keep going, if we make it. Simulating the failure of your simulation capacity, that's a lot of complexity the organism doesn't need.

Again, just shooting my mouth off here. Some observations as science gadfly.

[1] Psychedelics introduce similar paths to having mystic narratives, and have been used as such for at least thousands of years. Probably longer than that, judging from their usage among even primitive mammals.

polishdude20• 3 years ago

I've always felt that to get AGI it needs to have some concept or fear of death ingrained in it just like humans do. It happens to every human always. It's been in our evolution. The fear and avoidance of death is a primal core of who we are and how we think.

Condition1952• 3 years ago

There was a Reddit thread not long ago where commenters spoke about their near death experiences.

All coincided in that it was a pleasant experience

MPSimmons5• 3 years ago

In January, 2022, I experienced a 100% blockage of my Left Anterior Descending artery (a "widowmaker" heart attack), and I experienced cardiac arrest for a minute or two while on the exam table in a local emergency room. CPR was administered, and I was shocked back into rhythm, whereupon I regained consciousness immediately.

During the time I was dead, I have a memory. It is a singular experience of non-existence. Everything was black, and warm, and comfortable. It was silent, and there was no pain or concern for anything that had been going on. I didn't even think about it. It was as though I were in the most effective sensory deprivation tank ever.

Then they shocked me, and it hurt like hell. I woke up, looked at the doctor, and he said, "you went away for a few there", and I said, "Oh, did I?".

A couple minutes later, they "lost" me, and I went back to the blackness, but for a much shorter period of time, and I was shocked almost immediately. I had the wherewithal, upon being shocked, to say, in a very annoyed voice, 'Ouch.' which apparently caused some people in the ER room to laugh.

I ended up crashing 6 times that day, and each time I underwent cardiac arrest, it was like slipping back asleep into the deepest dream.

I used to be afraid to die. Now, I'm not, but I'm afraid to leave behind the people that I love, because I want to spend time with them, and I don't want them to have to go through me leaving them again.

Update: Here's a link to my tweet when I first talked publicly about it - https://twitter.com/standaloneSA/status/1478436334347816960

metamet• 3 years ago

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 ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. In the face of such evidence and against such powerful and widespread belief systems of the afterlife, I occasionally think of the possibility of an afterlife, but there is no hint that I will see anyone I know, or even continue to exist in any form, but rather a long dreamless sleep.

- Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium

7thaccount2• 3 years ago

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 live in a secure country with food on the table.

generalizations• 3 years ago

Did you experience brain death? Because that kinda sounds like the sensation of losing all contact with the peripheral nervous system, without actually losing consciousness.

MPSimmons5• 3 years ago

Don't know. There was no brain monitoring going on. When I crashed, the tech was still trying to put on the EKG leads.

wutwutwat3• 3 years ago

If they had experience brain death they wouldn’t be here talking to you.

Death is the permanent end of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. It is no longer defined as the cessation of heartbeat (cardiac arrest) and breathing, as CPR and prompt defibrillation can sometimes restart both. In modern medicine, when a definition of the moment of death is required, doctors and coroners usually turn to "brain death" or "biological death" to define a person as being dead; brain death being defined as the complete and irreversible loss of brain function (including involuntary activity necessary to sustain life).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_after_death#Deat...

TL;DR - you don’t come back from actual death, or you didn’t actually die. There’s no coming back from all biological function ending.

just_1_comment• 3 years ago

I was present when someone else went through the same experience but they reacted slightly differently than you did…”Please don’t stop CPR! There’s nothing there! Whenever you stop and I die, it’s all black!” His last horrified words were “There’s nothing there!”

MPSimmons5• 3 years ago

wow, that's really unfortunate for him. I don't know why I reacted so positively when he reacted so negatively, but I didn't find it disturbing at all. It was a palpable feeling of being "okay" for me.

I take it that person didn't make it?

Nextgrid2• 3 years ago

I wonder if this reaction was because his brain hasn't yet entered the stage where NDEs normally occur - ie. he was still somewhat conscious and expecting an NDE at this early stage where they don't yet occur?

mrtksn• 3 years ago

During the time I was dead

Thanks for sharing. Very interesting experience however, I don’t think that you were dead. IMHO, you were in a state where your brain was not functioning properly due to lack of blood flow or maybe external input.

All death experiences seem to be something of that sort and I suspect if body transplant was a thing, the experience would have been similar.

I think the correct description of the experience would be pre-death or something similar and would not be a glimpse into the “life beyond death”.

MPSimmons5• 3 years ago

I don't think I have grounds to argue against this take.

I think the definition of death changes over time as medical technology advances in its ability to return someone to "life".

nelblu• 3 years ago

I had similar experience where my heart stopped beating and went into complete darkness, apparently it was a reaction to something they were doing a tissue sample. Nonetheless the experience was very similar but I was only 14 then, so I didn't think much of life or death then.

Now almost 3 decades later, I really don't think that dying is what I'm most worried about, really I just don't want to die before my dog or my wife. That said, being quite influenced by stoicism I do remind myself that I could die any second and I always live such that I won't have any regrets if I die any minute. Memento Mori.

interfixus• 3 years ago

During the time I was dead

Semantic correction for this and all similar recollections: You are alive to tell the story, so you were, in fact, not dead.

MPSimmons5• 3 years ago

I got better. ;-)

wutwutwat3• 3 years ago

Loss of consciousness is not death, your brain was alive the entire time. It takes upwards of 10 minutes before the brain dies, usually longer, and each minute approaching those thresholds has a high probability of severe brain damage. Check out cerebral anoxia or brain death to learn more.

ASalazarMX2• 3 years ago

If you were expecting actual death, then no revived person has ever experienced death because they weren't completely dead to begin with, even if tissue damage happened. Let's compromise on near death experience.

nirui• 3 years ago

I read quite a few reports claiming the similar experience, a deep sleep. That's how I view death now, a sleep so deep that no one can wake up from it. With all external inputs are muted, the brain left itself alone in the "void", doing what brains do, fade to "dreaming".

But then again, I imagine one could experience almost the same when under anesthesia or just regular sleep, so I guess you don't really have to do it the hard way :)

ASalazarMX2• 3 years ago

They say life is the space between two black eternities.

I suppose we already know what death is like: exactly the same than before we were born, vast non-existence.

DoingIsLearning• 3 years ago

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 reads like something you write down in a proposal to get it past an Ethics committee.

clnq2• 3 years ago

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.

wolverine8762• 3 years ago

How do they obtained informed consent for human experimentation? If I understand, the researchers are summoned to the hospital bedside of someone undergoing cardiac arrest. If they came into a loved one's room, or mine, I would be very angry. Any risk or distraction is too much.

But that's my perspective. Maybe they obtain permission from next of kin?

AndrewKemendo5• 3 years ago

It’s increasingly clear to me as a group, people who practice real science as a discipline, are an odd bunch that don’t necessarily fit into the social categories that would be bothered by these kinds of things

I know nobody in my close friends or limited family that would bat an eye if someone came into my hospital room to do this

wolverine8762• 3 years ago

Perhaps that is true on a social level, but informed consent is an institutionalized, strongly enforced rule of research.

anigbrowl• 3 years ago

It seems pretty obvious that they didn't, and I suspect this whole project is a function of knowing the right people.

I also don't think it's a very well-designed experiment (in that it makes some assumptions about where attention is focused; if there were truly an OOBE taking place, then I would not expect the disembodied consciousness to be connected to the sensory apparatus, nor to pay particular attention to a tablet with some random image being held up toward the ceiling), but I suppose you have to start somewhere. I don't think it's unethical exactly, but it's intrusive in an extremely weird fashion. Might be justifiable if the EEG cap turns up useful medical information independent of the parapsychological investigation.

dang• 3 years ago

Recent and related:

Patients recall death experiences after cardiac arrest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37726301 - Oct 2023 (13 comments)

People experience ‘new dimensions of reality' when dying: study - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37725115 - Oct 2023 (66 comments)

sibeliuss• 3 years ago

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.

k9unit2• 3 years ago

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.

AdamH121132• 3 years ago

The substantive results from the article:

First, most of the 53 survivors initially flat-lined on the EEG, but, with continued CPR, recovered brain activity up to 60 minutes later. This result not only encourages first responders to persist, it also suggests the possibility of to-be-recalled cognitive activity in comatose patients.
Second, 6 of the 28 interviewed survivors (21 percent) had a “transcendent recalled experience of death.” This roughly accords with prior studies’ finding that 10 to 15 percent of cardiac arrest survivors report a memorable transcendent conscious experience (which Parnia labels a “recalled experience of death” rather than a “near-death experience”).
Third, the study enabled an unprecedented objective test of survivors’ recall accuracy. ... Parnia and his three dozen collaborators creatively devised and implemented a plan to put claims of death-experience recollections to the test. As patients underwent CPR, a tablet computer displayed one of ten visual images, such as an animal, a person, or a monument. When later interviewed, could the 28 survivors report the image displayed during their death experience? If not, could they, when shown the ten possible images, guess which image had been displayed? The result: “Nobody identified the visual image."
During 5 minutes of the CPR, patients also were repeatedly exposed through the headphone audio to the names of 3 fruits: apple, pear, banana. When the 28 survivors were later asked to guess the 3 fruits, how many correctly recalled them? One person. (A chance result? When a colleague invited his psychology students to name 3 fruits, a similar 2 of 50 named an apple, pear, and banana.)

So near-death experiences are fairly common, but no evidence that memories of out-of-body experiences reflect reality.

lib-dev2• 3 years ago

Define reality.

AdamH121132• 3 years ago

Haven’t had an occasion to do this before, but sure — here you go: https://www.yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth

jareklupinski• 3 years ago

the moment from when you started reading this until the end of the sentence

bagels• 3 years ago

Deja-vu and false memories exist. It's hard to know whether these experiences are just more of the same, where the brain is placing unreal memories.

yencabulator6• 3 years ago

The fact that nobody could remember the fruit names (better than random chance) implies that at least sound and/or language are not processed, and thus reports of such are false memories.

The fact that nobody could remember the image on the tablet facing the ceiling implies that no actual OOBE happened, and that part is false memory.

_nalply4• 3 years ago

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 other words: Scientific experiments about some things are inconclusive or just limited to what is scientifically measurable. The world is larger than that.

etrautmann• 3 years ago

To prove your point, in an almost trivial sense, there are things we seem to be unable to study effectively, like nutrition. In principle it could be studied but in practice it's nearly impossible.

I think you're making the bigger point though that there are things that we might not be able to study at all, which I'm not sure I agree is well grounded, despite it seeming impossible given current methods.

_nalply4• 3 years ago

We can study it, but won't get scientific results.

darkteflon• 3 years ago

Absolutely no disrespect intended to your beliefs (and I agree with your second two paragraphs) but there mere fact of your brain experiencing something is not proof that it is “real”, if that word means anything at all.

_nalply4• 3 years ago

Are dreams not real? We all know that we dream.

ShamelessC• 3 years ago

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?

hnfong2• 3 years ago

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

macNchz• 3 years ago

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'd read about, and one after underestimating the potency of some cannabis.)

intelVISA• 3 years ago

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

k9unit2• 3 years ago

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?

_nalply4• 3 years ago

Now you are starting to use the scientific method: namely asking if people can see things without their own material eyes and trying to find a way to be sure about this subject.

You won't find an answer if this part of OOBE cannot be captured by the scientific method.

yencabulator6• 3 years ago

The experiments in the article had a tablet computer pointed at the ceiling; nobody could pick which symbol it showed during their "experience". All evidence points toward hallucinations and after the fact imagined detail to fill in blanks.

hnfong2• 3 years ago

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.

perfmode2• 3 years ago

If I am about to die, and you repeat apple, pear, banana in my ears in headphones, I will haunt you from the afterlife.

archibaldJ2• 3 years ago

As funny as this is, there is something trippy in what you said.

Actually this is why LSD is so important - it helps you better recognise the voices repeating apple, pear, banana in your everyday life

we are all always about to die:

1. everyday billions of your cells die and are dying

2. death is the single most real/important matter in life, and about to or not really only depends on how relativistic you want to be

3. can always swiftly get real because you never know when your last day is

perfmode2• 3 years ago

Thanks for sharing

wessorh• 3 years ago

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 several dead friends, some aliens and at least one deity. The dreams were most vivid and I now look at death as a physical phenomena, I do believe that my spirit persists. I'm glad that I get to continue with this life and I'm grateful for all the days, good or bad. The "dreams" were 90% dark/bad but having survived those makes today just wonderful.

kokanee• 3 years ago

Thanks for sharing. When you read articles like the above, which suggest that those perceptions are hallucinations from oxygen starvation, how do you react?

voldacar• 3 years ago

What were those alien beings like? And the deity?

duncancarroll• 3 years ago

I've had a couple OBEs (as a result of meditation, not near-death), and they're very interesting, but I'm not surprised that Parnia's subjects weren't able to match up any images because I've never had an OBE where the objective world is completely accurate. It's odd because you'll be totally lucid, often more so than in waking life, but things are slightly off, and electronics in particular never seem to work.

I've had OBEs where I can remember any aspect of my life from any time period, in exact, incredible detail, just as if it had all been recorded and was being played back on a gigantic IMAX. Smells, tastes, sounds, thoughts, everything, with no impediment to recall. Every memory was instantly available as soon as I thought of it. It was like I'd just taken off a heavy lead raincoat I'd been wearing all my life, and now there was nothing to impede thought or movement.

In another, more mundane experience, I had just OBE'd and was trying to lift my arm out of my body. As I did so, my watch's vibrating alarm went off, so I grabbed my arm and tried to turn it off (it only has two buttons and pressing either will turn it off.) I could feel the buttons, but as I pressed them it did nothing. Then I realized, of course, that I wasn't grabbing my real arm. So I laid back down, snapped back into my body, opened my eyes and turned off the real watch.

I was surprised b/c it had never occurred to me that something as insignificant as my wristwatch would come with me into the OBE state, nor that I would be able to feel it and manipulate it exactly like the real thing. It made me think how in ancient Egypt the dead would be buried with everything they needed to take with them to the afterlife. Food for thought.

throw1234651234• 3 years ago

No real reason to believe OBEs are anything other LDs. As you said nothing lines up, so the whole "your soul / astral body / whatever is travelling" has no weight. Furthermore, LDs/OBEs seem to be subject to working memory overload. Try looking at a large distance in an OBE, it won't render.

lib-dev2• 3 years ago

It renders, it just takes time for me.

sebastianconcpt• 3 years ago

I happen to had a lot of Out-Of-Body Experiences. They are anything but similar. There is like a gradient of lucidity and the most common are the ones where you're very low on that. Like super-sleepy, feeling heavy and lazy to think or do anything. The ones that usually people remember and find remarkable and (sometimes deeply) influential are the ones that have your consciousness super lucid. As much as when you're awake (vigil) or more.

Nothing will convince you more that you are way way more than the matter that composes your body than having these experiences a bunch of times.

A long time ago I wrote some details about this here:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-an-out-of-body-experience/answ...

falsaberN1• 3 years ago

I had a bit of a...situation...recently and I didn't experience anything. Like, 100% literally nothing. I collapsed and then just flashed back like if no time has passed, and very confused because the room suddenly changed and there was a lot of people around me that weren't there last time I blinked.

It was not like sleep where even when dreaming you kind of have a sense of things happening and a flow of time, it was a literal off-on. Like if time stopped, I was moved elsewhere and then resumed.

Disappointing, in a way.

xysg• 3 years ago

I haven't been near death, even though I was previously involved in a serious motorcycle accident (I was a pillion rider) as a kid, where I completely blanked out. Don't have any memories of the actual accident at all.

What I want to say however is that anyone who wants to make conclusions regarding whether there's life after death cannot do so without invoking the spiritual realm as well.

I've personally had a spiritual encounter whereby the holy spirit entered my body (I could actually sense the lifting of my skin in my chest and His entry into me). That experience changed my life forever.

The point I'm trying to make I guess is that there are many things about this so-called life that we still don't know about, in particular the dimensions we can't see and which science refutes because they can't be tested.

Perhaps that's why religion is often about having faith?

gehwartzen• 3 years ago

You came out of nothing and you return to nothing.

Think about the last 13.8 billion years of your existence. Death is merely returning to that place. Was it uncomfortable or scary for “you” during those 13.8 billion years. Probably not. The “you” that has the capacity for worry, sadness, joy, etc. won’t exist after death.

And perhaps a new “you” will pop into existence out of nothing just as it did before. Or maybe not.

archibaldJ2• 3 years ago

no no you came out of the universe and you return to the universe

nothing is free !

everything that made up of you had always been here since the beginning :)

chris_acd• 3 years ago

What the result indicate is that a) they did not see the tablet screen in the “state of outer body” (why would they?) b) did not hear sounds through their physical ears

MailleQuiMaille• 3 years ago

We don’t even know what consciousness is, where we come from and why we are here. When you start to delve in the areas of synchronicities, archetypes, placebo effect and quantum mechanics, you realize that science can only get you so far.

I long for a new company exploring the fringe of such phenomena, something like Sony did with ESPER (google it, it’s a nice rabbit hole). I could bet that some people in the world are currently doing this, just not in public.

southernplaces7• 3 years ago

I long for a new company exploring the fringe of such phenomena, something like Sony did with ESPER (google it, it’s a nice rabbit hole).

Followed your advice but could find nothing except repeat mentions of the Xperia phone (thanks Google, because obviously ESPER is the same thing as Xperia...)

Care to share a link maybe?

Awareness at Death

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