site banner
PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2235 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 11, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Interesting video on Near-Death Experiences and what they might tell us about the afterlife.

It's basically a summary of the book "Why An Afterlife Obviously Exists" by Swedish philosopher Jens Amberts. It makes the case that:

  • Almost everyone who has an NDE comes to believe in an afterlife
  • There are no psychological/sociological predictors of who has an NDE, so they are a random sample of the population
  • 10s of millions of people have had them
  • They're skewed by age ofc, but even children who've had these experiences describe them in similar terms

The go-to physicalist explanation for why these happen is a release of DMT in the brain at the moment of death, which I'm sure the author is aware of. I haven't read the book yet but I'd be curious to know how he compares these experiences to DMT trips. Given the sheer number of people who've had NDEs there must be a few thousand who have also tried DMT, would love to read their thoughts comparing them. Of course, even if they did claim there were substantial differences, we could say that other chemicals are involved in different doses and these are all just a particular flavor of psychedelic trip. Still, seems like a topic worthy of more research.

The issue I’ve always had about NDEs having anything to really tell us about what happens when we die is just how culturally specific they tend to be. (https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/01/NDE76-Japanese-and-western-JNDS.pdf) just for a quick example. Japanese people tend to see the light, but not interpret it as a being, westerners see cities of light, Japanese see flower gardens. Westerners have life reviews where fewer Japanese do. As an objective experience, this simply should not be, an experience of reality might be interpreted differently, but it should be a similar experience.

The case he makes is that there is significant overlap. A Christian might see Jesus as a spirit guide, a Hindu might see Shiva, but there’s still a sense of the other reality being eternal and more real than this one.

A Christian might see Jesus as a spirit guide, a Hindu might see Shiva

But, isn't that exactly the hallmark of a subjective phenomenon based on hallucination/misremembering/wishful thinking/etc, rather than an objective phenomenon based in reality? The most parsimonious explanation when confronted with mutually contradictory reports of the same phenomenon is that someone (or everyone) is simply mistaken.

It's analogous to how you have a lot of wildly contradictory reports of UFO encounters, with people reporting different physical appearances of the aliens themselves, different appearances of the craft (which suspiciously seem to evolve along with American aesthetic preferences, from the Cold War-era flying saucers to the modern Apple-inspired cubes and spheres), so some believers try to explain the contradictions away by saying "well, maybe they aren't really aliens, maybe these are spiritual entities that are manifested by the collective unconscious, so they take whatever form a particular observer is expecting", and it's like, yeah maybe that's the case... or there could just be no UFOs to begin with. That theory also resolves all the contradictions, in a much more parsimonious manner.

That being said. Someone close to me did have an NDE, and he still swears by it decades later. He described it as "perfection", beyond the most perfect bliss you could ever imagine, of a totally different ontological kind from anything that you could ever experience in this reality. Frequently when he retells the story, he reminds me "I've done a lot of drugs. I know what drugs feel like. This was no drug."

I do believe that, even if these states of consciousness are nothing more than the result of brain chemistry, they're clearly very exceptional states that merit further investigation.

That being said. Someone close to me did have an NDE, and he still swears by it decades later. He described it as "perfection", beyond the most perfect bliss you could ever imagine, of a totally different ontological kind from anything that you could ever experience in this reality. Frequently when he retells the story, he reminds me "I've done a lot of drugs. I know what drugs feel like. This was no drug."

I do believe that, even if these states of consciousness are nothing more than the result of brain chemistry, they're clearly very exceptional states that merit further investigation.

I've had an NDE but I can't disentangle the profound sense of bliss from also being pumped up full of pain killers by the doctors at the hospital.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats