Is there life after death? John Cleese discusses with panel of scientists | Hacker News Reader

Is there life after death? John Cleese discusses with panel of scientists

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Physicist Sean Carroll’s take, based empirical understanding, and what would be necessary for some essence of a person’s conscious to remain after death.

https://youtu.be/jUIjDncKZbM

This is really bad. Inscrutable and arrogant for the layman, basic and non-explanatory for the well versed. What exactly is being “explained” here? Atomic energy post mortem? If that’s the attempt, it’s a fail.

It's an elaboration of the fact that brain meat is not magic, and can't be magic, and everything we understand about the laws of physics leaves no room for future discoveries allowing for magic.

The statement that there is no afterlife is equivalent to the statement that the sun is not made of spaghetti. There's no possible math, context, perspective, or arrangement of facts that would allow the sun to be made of spaghetti.

Your consciousness resides in your neocortex, the thin sheet of neurons on the surface of your brain. We know this because when injury or illness disrupts or damages its operation, your consciousness goes away. It's maintained if there's injury or illness anywhere else.

There's no room for disembodied mystery. There's no room in the laws of physics for information transfer such that the pattern of physical connections and electrochemical activity in your brain to be communicated intact when you die. Everything we know about the universe leaves no mechanism for your mind to continue after biological death.

We will eventually scan brains, and at some point we might be able to extend our minds into machines and maintain our consciousness after the biological parts die. We don't know enough about the nuanced particulars of neuroscience but the challenges are a matter of resolution, scale, signal strength, and not damaging a living system. There's no mystery to the phenomena of consciousness allowed by laws of physics.

Multiverse or simulation theory leaves room for some different level of reality where the substrate of your mind resides. Those are interesting abstractions, but there's no evidence or theory to suggest either of those contexts are valid.

It's not arrogant to assert that the moon isn't made of cheese or the sun is not made of pasta, or that there is no life after death.

It seems to me that insisting on those things in the face of evidence would be arrogant, as you would be claiming that you know better than everything that can be proven, all of those things for which we have evidence and explanation.

> It's an elaboration of the fact that brain meat is not magic, and can't be magic, and everything we understand about the laws of physics leaves no room for magic.

This assertion is rather short-sighted and presumes, wrongly, that knowledge on a topic is already complete.

Yet, we live in a day and age when scientists are still discovering muscles in the jaw. We're talking about basic anatomy, not how neurons work.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29705819

Is it too hard to imagine that knowledge on how the brain actually works is still far from complete?

What the parent is trying to say is that it's not because we do not know how something works that any explanation is therefore true.

The equivalent of "it's never aliens".

There might be an afterlife or not. But in order to accept this idea as true, a proof (extraordinary one in that case) is needed. And for now, except some anecdata, there isn't much to it (as far as I know).

Your comment makes no sense at all and is based on an attempt to surreptitiously invert the burden of proof. No one has argued that "not know how something works" implies that "any explanation is therefore true." That would be silly.

The basic principle is falsiability. It has been widely established that a sufficient condition to alter or eliminate consciousness and even personality traits is inflicting precise physical changes to the brain, such as severing pathways.

There is absolutely no evidence, let alone reproducible observations, supporting crackpot theories such as afterlifes or any form of consciousness that is not dictated by the brain.

It makes absolutely no sense to appeal to this or any other form of crackpot theories by alleging that established facts and knowledge covered by mainstream theories is still under development.

Narrow thinking. There is currently no evidence supporting “crackpot” theories like consciousness persisting our understanding of the physical realm. Of COURSE we’ve not witnessed any scientific evidence of life after death — that would be a scientific discovery!

To assert that atomic activity dictates the bounds of consciousness sounds a lot more like asserting the moon is made of cheese than entertaining the possibility that it isn’t. We didn’t even understand basic atomic principles until Rutherford et al around 100 years ago, and our knowledge regarding neutrinos and particle acceleration is still rapidly evolving.

To claim that because we have not directly witnessed or extra-physical consciousness is a bit like saying a grain of sand is the smallest unit because we haven’t witnessed anything smaller.

There is no room for free will, but we live like there is.

His arguments are based on the assumption of "we are biological computers made out of atoms flying in spacetime".

Authors of this conference argue precisely against this assumption - e.g. they explore alternatives in the "beyond physicalism" book.

He claims that we figured all the physics relevant for the brain, so there is nothing potentially there. Penrose and Hammerhof theory of quantum processing inside the neuron is still under heavy debate. We still weren't able to simulate a single biological neuron - see blue brain project. Donald Hoffman presents solid arguments that spacetime and "atoms" are projections from some more complex reality underneath.

This.

The assumption that we know how atoms work in the brain is absurdly reductionist. I would ask a physicist well versed in information theory to validate the holographic principle's validity. Once they make this breakthrough in physics, then I would use that result to begin to put faith into Sean Carroll's assumption.

"Afterlife" isn't even well defined in this argument. What decisions and experiences are the ones that define you as a conscious individual in the physical sense? Based on your answer to this, I could recreate an "afterlife" decision matrix for you matching your personality to varying degrees by reprogramming the relevant constructs that exist in your brain.

For a physicist, this is not a scientific argument at all. It all sounds very philosophical.

'The mind is the brain' -- his very first premise is a controversial assumption, one that's a long way from being universally accepted. Without that assumption, the rest of his argument falls apart.

There are many people, myself included, who think that while there is a connection between mind and brain (the brain clearly has a causal impact on the mind), the two are not the same.

I'm being quite brief here. I have done a lot of thinking, and even writing (this was a big part of my PhD) about this, and let me just say that there is a lot of room to reasonably disagree with Sean Carroll. His view is just one in the marketplace, and is certainly no more (and possibly less!) scientifically robust than the alternatives.

Sorry for stupid questions, so what’s there and is it worth it?

Also, do you think that “mind” part is singular or plural, per universe? If plural, where do they come from?

Where is the mind science central, is there a site or a starter kit?

I've mentioned the names of a handful to some others, but quickly again: various types of dualism (substance and property), monist views like George Berkeley's idealism, and non-reductive physicalism.

I mention above that Sean Carroll is diving into philosophical questions here. If you'd like to learn more, then depending on your expertise, you could look up more on philosophy of mind -- there's a lot of literature. There are also scientific investigations that may be of relevance to these questions to, such as near death experiences, out of body experiences, that sort of thing. I don't think that those sorts of experiences actually would settle the discussion either way, but they are interesting and relevant nonetheless. I haven't watched the video that this HN article is about yet.

When you mention singular or plural, are you asking if I think there's just one mind or many in our universe? My own personal view, I think there are many minds in our universe (is that what you were asking?). I lean towards an idealist view similar to, but not the same as, George Berkeley's. One where mind/mental is the fundamental substance, and the physical world exists on top of that mental substrate. Mine is a pretty uncommon view though. Most people are physicalists of some sort or dualists, I think.

> 'The mind is the brain' -- his very first premise is a controversial assumption, one that's a long way from being universally accepted. Without that assumption, the rest of his argument falls apart.

You wrote a rather lengthy post saying you disagree, mixed with an empty appeal to authority, but you provided no counterpoint or evidence or rationale or hypothesis refuting or contradicting the assertion that the mind is the brain.

If the mind is not the brain then what is it, then?

I would not have considered my post lengthy by any stretch. Sean Carroll offered nothing in that short video other than an assertion that the mind is the brain, and then some consequences that follow from that raw assertion. I have done no worse than him.

As for what the mind might be if it is not the brain, that is not a short discussion. As a pointer, take a look at various substance or property dualist views, or monist views such as that of George Berkeley.

> If the mind is not the brain then what is it, then?

We have no external experience so we have no way to truly know the answer.

Could the brain be a conduit for some external interface for each mind?

Could the brain be an interface for some larger shared mind?

Could the brain be a vessel that carries the mind while the brain is alive?

Could the brain be a figment of the mind?

Just because science can't yet describe subjective post-death experiences doesn't mean they don't occur.

That being said, I'm personally in the rational constructivist camp wherein I think that our mental "scaffolding" obscures our ability to be objective when we try to reason about this. Though I am hopeful we find some answers someday!

What are those alternatives?

I believe the common scientific consensus is that of classic materialism: mind is a process supported by the body's matter.

There are probably alternative theories indeed but they are at the fringes. For example, what are the repeatable experiments that would prove that the mind exists outside the body?

They've been billions of experiments now were people body disappear and the mind never came back. Unless you believe in spiritism which is far from being an accepted scientific theory.

Alternatives include substance and property dualism, and monism such as that put forward by George Berkeley. In the materialist camp, besides identity theory (where mind = brain), there are also non-reductive physicalists, though I think that's a poor alternative.

Although Sean Carroll is a scientist, his claim that mind = body is a philosophical one, not a scientific one. I would not be surprised if most scientists are identity theorists or similar when it comes to these questions, but that's more a product of (a) science community culture and (b) the fact that science covers a group of methods to try to answer questions about the material world. There are questions worth asking, and worth trying to answer, that are not scientific questions and not amenable to investigation via scientific methodologies. Those might be mathematical (is there any rational number that is the square root of two?) or logical (e.g., whether to accept S5 modal logic), or other philosophical questions (does God exist? do the objects of mathematics exist?).

Scientists may find themselves thinking about these question, may have strong opinions about some of them (as indeed Sean Carroll does), but these are not scientific questions. Many of the interesting questions about the relation between mind and body are for now philosophical (with some overlap with science -- e.g., finding out ways in which the brain can affect the mind).

On that point, I don't see the relevance of the fact (if indeed it is a fact) that billions of bodies have disappeared without a mind ever coming back. Suppose that someone thinks that brain and mind are not identical -- why would they expect the mind to come back once the body disappears?

I like to keep an open mind about these things. But they tend to be metaphysical arguments based on asking lots of questions and just pondering the issue, rather than on testable empiricism. If there is no physical test to prove the point, then it would equally valid for me to say we’re all video game characters, or living in a dream, or conjure up innumerable scenarios, no matter how ridiculous they could all be equally valid. It’s not scientific if it can’t be tested at some level through reproducible experiment. The point Carroll is making is that the atoms in our brain don’t magically float away after we die, and there is no scientific model that would allow that to happen, even through currently unexplained phenomena (like dark matter or weakly interacting particles).

It’s an argumentative fallacy to simply say we don’t know what we don’t know, therefore anything is possible. Rather than on what we currently do know.

There is no way to prove one way or the other unless the technology exists to touch someone’s plane of consciousness.

If we are all p-zombies there is no way to know.

There is no known scientific reasoning wherein we could not just be p-zombies, but our entire experience seems to have free will (which by any interesting definition is supernatural).

You can't just make stuff up, there is no room to disagree. "Because it is compatible with my religion and is comforting" is not intellectual thought.

I agree, Sean Carroll shouldn't just make stuff up.

> "Because it is compatible with my religion and is comforting" is not intellectual thought

I think you replied to the wrong person. I never said anything remotely close to this.

Is my broken computer still working in some fantasy world, detached from its hardware?

For some nice science-fiction on that topic, read Permutation City by Greg Egan.

Short summary of the 80 min discussion:

- Is there life after death? - It depends.

we don't have to die if we acknowledge that we are just information and that information once thought lost can be recovered much later due to more powerful technology. The problem is the information in the brain must be preserved until such more powerful technology comes on the scene. Hence, cryonics and chemopreservation of brains.

Furthermore, one can argue that the holy bible shows that early christians understood these principles (see here: https://betterresurrectionchurch.wordpress.com/ )

Am I worth preserving, except my ego?

Scanning and archiving could be a better solution. Also, i d prefer to virtually restart my life at 30, not at 88

Is there before?

So most of what these panelists say can't be easily confirmed. But the last one told a story about when he was at Duke's Rhine research center; there was a guy who could guess remarkably well which cards people drew from a deck or which random lights were shown behind a screen.

Who is this guy and why didnt they get more evidence of these psi abilities? I assume there isn't any video or well known third party skeptics who conducted controlled experiments.

I looked at Rhine's website but couldn't find anything.

Is there ever death? If one creature ceases to function, its carbon is quickly recycled into other creatures.

The title looks like a Monty python sketch

I'm in the mood to providing and alternative title

Is there life after death? A comic actor discuses with Bruce Greyson, Jim B. Tucker, Edward Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly and Kim Penberthy.

John Cleese's previous take on the subject: https://youtu.be/YoBTsMJ4jNk

Does it really matter? Perhaps the real challenge is instead leading a full, good and giving life.

Only if you preserve or scan your brain

You’re just a set of weights and biases right?

you would need gene expression and epigenomics too. And still be an approximation, but probably good enough

I don't see a sarcasm tag, so I'll assume you are being straight.

No, things are far more complex than that. Perhaps, knowing the connectivity of all the connections and the "weights" of excitation and inhibition one could model the short term behavior of the brain it came from.

But brains aren't static -- they learn and grow and remodel; they have all kinds of feedback loops (eg metabolic and hormonal); their response to conditions is undoubtedly far more complex than "fire if the sum of the weighted inputs is above a certain threshold".

I’m not sure your rebuttal is sufficient. Weights and biases in the form of a neural network aren’t static either. Deep Reinforcement Learning algorithms exhibit learning and growing. Besides who says complexity is necessary or that ANNs are not complex enough?

The "materialism" consciousness theory is primarily what they are arguing against and people in this video gathered lots of solid scientific evidence against it.

If not "brain is a biological computer" then what? We don't know yet, but some things in the right direction are Donald Hoffman's model, Penrose and Hammerhof quantum processing in the brain, Kastrup analytic idealism, maybe it's some form of radio? Authors of this conference through some theories in "beyond physicalism" book.

Those are tangents that someone might want to ponder about but i wouldn't want neuroscientists wasting their time looking for mythical quantum qualia.

The biggest question is why people object to a materialist theory of the mind

And the biggest "hmm" is why/for what reason do we have a specific neuronal circuit/capability to tell us that some god/presence is near us[0]?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet

our brain is the sole source of our thoughts, and most of our thoughts are baseless conjecture.

Do we? The theory you mention is widely disputed, plus even the article you shared mentions issues with reproducibility, blinding etc…

That's why I said "capability". Yes, "god helmet" device may not be really working, but participants were reporting having a feeling (false reading, but a reading nonetheless). I compare it to a broken voltage detector which sometimes show a reading of voltage. That reading suggests there may exist a voltage. Yeah, counterargument could just be a signal of "beware, there is something out there going to kill you" being mistranslated as "there is god out there", but still, "god presence detector" seems to at least exist.

That's a fascinating link, but my materialistic understanding is that the brain is an analogue signal processor, and tries to pattern match incoming signals to known experiences. In this case the input activates the "there is someone with me" signal. Doesn't mean there is.

The brain is not a digital CPU, where every behaviour is a result of specific purpose-made circuitry. There is no "God detector" system in the brain.

> And the biggest "hmm" is why/for what reason do we have a specific neuronal circuit/capability to tell us that some god/presence is near us[0]?

I'm not sure you read the article you cited, but it clearly states that the initial claims behind the "god helmet" cannot and could not be independently replicated.

Also, the underlying theory refers to "very weak magnetic fields" that are "as strong as those generated by a land line telephone handset or an ordinary hair dryer". If this had any bearing on reality, the law of large numbers would imply we'd see a relatively large number of people experiencing this effect in the wild in ways that could be replicated and experienced by anyone in the vicinity, which we are not.

So, what leads you to believe that these claims are not made up by either a crackpot or a fraudster?

What about the neurons in your heart and gut? The brain isn’t the only place your body has processing capacity.

Those are the peripherals. (i.e. keyboard, usb dongle)

A motherboard or SOC's design has a lot to do with the peripherals it's intended to connect with. Interrupts directly influence control logic, for example.

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