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Comment by DonCarlitos | Hacker News Reader

This corresponds with what I've read previously about brain activity following clinical death. What appears to be the case is that the brain continues to work for a period after the heart stops and a last breath is taken. So what that might mean is that if one is with a person who has just died, a relative or friend, there is still a moment, just a moment, to say good bye and I love you. And it is comforting to know that during that moment, the brain of the deceased might just be reliving all the greatest moments of that individual's life.

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> the brain continues to work for a period after the heart stops

I had a sudden cardiac arrest (Ventricular Fibrillation). I felt dizzy and oriented for a few seconds (5?) after my heart stopped pumping blood and then I passed out. There was no life-flashing-before-my-eyes, no tunnels of light, just sudden dizziness and disorientation and then nothing. The next thing I remember was coming round in hospital.

What if you just don't remember the experiences you've had during this moment? Not impossible, imho

An interesting thought, but in my mind it also raises the question of the meaning behind a sequence of memories that you don't remember remembering, there's simply no reason to assume it happened at all since without memories there is no other evidence of the event.

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

A dying person will not revisit their final moments if they were saved as memories. Giving comfort in passing is a kindness and a dignity to both the dying and the bereaved.

True, forming memories at that time might simply be unnecessary overhead since you're not likely to turn back without significant medical help. Memories that will never be accessed are just pointless.

But so are hiccups, who knows...

Also not very likely, as people who report those experiences say they're intense and vivid, not fleeting like a dream or an alcohol blackout.

It's an interesting point that rapidly becomes philosophical in a "if a tree falls in the woods" sense. I recently read a paper that suggested that sedating anaesthesia used with the promise of making a patient unaware of a procedure may actually do no such thing - instead they prevent the patient remembering the procedure afterwards. Which as a potential patient one day.. is a little terrifying, because even if I don't remember any trauma the next day, do I really want to experience it nonetheless?

When you're taken out of a minor surgery, you're usually awake as you're wheeled from the operating theatre back to your ward. If I think though about the one time I had surgery, I remember being told to think of something relaxing, falling asleep, and then waking up back in the ward. It's really interesting to think about how there was a brief period where I was awake, yet making no memories.

Feeling of being cut alive consists not only of your perception, but also of biochemical reactions, that’s why falling from the stairs dead-drunk doesn’t feel much horrible, and when you or your relatives are in danger, you don’t feel your fingers and muscles applying enormous force on things, which would be very painful otherwise. When you’re on a table, doctors don’t usually see (afaik) any of your blood pressure, hormones, etc raise too much. No reaction is no pain, which itself is a complex of sensations and thoughts, not a single signal. This state is not conscious, but yeah it may induce philosophical thinking.

Right. I used to box and I'm now painfully aware of the fragility of consciousness.

If you get hit right, the ~0.25-0.5 seconds prior and after to that hit do not exist for you. They are gone. You'll never know how you were hit or what you were doing, your eyes will just change instantly from "looking ahead" to "looking to the side/up" and you'll have to adjust very quickly to this new reality, despite the fact that the transition was instantaneous for you.

One guy used to joke that if you ever said something really dumb, you'd have about 1-2 seconds to hit the person who heard it so you could continue as though it never happened. Should tell you something about the kind of person you might find at a boxing gym.

Gmail has a little button at the bottom just after sending a mail to cancel it, that could be wired up to a boxing ball somehow.

small memory gaps after head trauma are relatively well documented - I'm recalling from ~15 years ago, but iirc the belief is that while the person is conscious at the time (before the head trauma) there's a disruption of the storage processes and those moments are forgotten. And then similarly, following a head trauma it takes a while for normal processing & storage to return. However, there's still some kind of conscious experience happening during those times. So there's a more philosophical question of like, "if you comfort someone and they forget it, was there any value in the comfort you provided?" but i felt like the paper was trying to argue, "yes" -- per the gp

> there is still a moment, just a moment, to say good bye and I love you

and why not? Maybe sometimes there is. and maybe the value of that is more for the living than the dead, but imo the point was that there's an argument they can still hear you. Will they remember it later? That's kind of a non-sequitor question if they're in the midst of dying.

First, I am sorry that you went through that.

Near death experiences do not happen to everyone who dies and is resuscitated. Supposedly, according to Wikipedia [1], it only happens to 10-20% of people. If someone is critically ill, it happens to 17% of those people.

But, it does happen to some people who go in to cardiac arrest.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience

Beautifully said, reminds me of "All these years, all these memories, there was you. You pulled me through time." from the fountain.

I'm rewatching Midnight Mass on Netflix with my wife. They have some very powerful monologues on death. This is one that occurred to me just now, when two characters are discussing what they believe happens after death:

"When I die, my body stops functioning. Five minutes later, my brain cells start dying. But in the meantime, in between, maybe my brain releases a flood of DMT – the psychedelic drug released when we dream – so I dream. I dream bigger than I have ever dreamed before because it’s all of it. Just the last dump of DMT all at once, and my neurons are firing and I’m seeing this firework display of memories and imagination.

My mind’s rifling through the memories, long and short term, and the dreams mix with the memories. And it’s a curtain call. One last great dream as my mind empties the fuckin’ missile silos, and then I stop.

My brain activity ceases and there is nothing left of me.

No pain, no memory, no awareness that I ever was.

That I ever hurt someone.

That I ever killed someone.

Everything is as it was before me.

All of the other little things that make me up – the microbes and bacterium and the billion other little things that live on my eyelashes and in my hair and in my mouth and on my skin and in my gut and everywhere else, they just keep on living and eating. And I’m serving a purpose. I’m feeding life and I’m broken apart and all the littlest pieces of me are just recycled and I’m billions of other places. And my atoms are in plants and bugs and animals, and I am like the stars that are in the sky. There one moment and then just scattered across the goddamn cosmos.”

https://adrianvstheworld.com/2021/10/05/midnight-mass-and-th...

And, another moving monologue, this one's a spoiler so heads up: https://www.reddit.com/r/HauntingOfHillHouse/comments/pxw74y...

Either way, this show hit me unexpectedly. One of my favorite "deep watches" in a long time.

I also find comfort in the idea of becoming food after we die. I remember reading somewhere how a beached whale in the arctic can be a life-saving windfall for the scavengers there. Helped me see the positive in something I’d always seen as purely tragic.

Same here. It's helpful insofar as any story can be helpful in the face of what we have to go through.

Interestingly enough, although my wife shares the same beliefs as me in terms of religion and God, the stories that resonate most with her from that show were the evocative ones about God and heaven. She told me that the science-based ones barely register to her at all, and almost not at all on an emotional level. As I heard the other character describe her idea of heaven, I too feel the pull of those descriptions. There's a part of me that agrees with the character when he says, after listening to her speech, wiping away tears, "I really hope you're right."

Most people think of heaven when it comes to the Bible's view of life after death, but it speaks more about a resurrection from the dead for the vast majority of people who die, to live forever on a paradise Earth.

There is something in us that makes us yearn for more than the short lives we have now (hardly anybody would choose to die if they had good health under normal circumstances), so these do resonate with us more than a purely materialistic world view, which has ostensibly left people with lack of contentment and sense of purpose.

It's a real danger that we'll have to deal with on a sociological level soon. Atheism is on the rise. I'm not versed in atheism as it occurs in countries other than in the US, but it seems like we'll see new types of problems that are not immediately apparent. That's the double-edged sword of rationalism. Truth and reason above all... But it's vital to remember that we're squishy and mushy and spiritual and emotional beings. It seems like it will be a lot of fun to be involved in media as it comes to deal with that shift more and more. What stories make the most sense, while still holding truth at the center? What do people need?

I'm reminded of the prototypical Alan Watts lectures. He might be out of fashion at the moment, but maybe his work will one day again be a little flicker in the cave for us to reach for, down the line.

if you didn't know, an Alan Watts lecture plays a part in puzzle video game The Witness.

Sweet! I'll check it out. He also shows up in the movie Her... Maybe prescient haha

I find little comfort in it. By the time your 120-200 imperial pounds becomes food, you will have shat another 25,000 pounds that has gone into a sewer or elsewhere and fed some bacteria down the line.

I mean, isn't that just a demonstration of how there's interconnection between it all?

Thanks for mentioning this show, I sought it out and watched it on Netflix on the basis of your mentioning this depth of dialogue. And it was fantastic. I tend to skip past the "horror" genre because I've generally found it quite singularly un-cerebral. Midnight Mass was great, and it was primarily the quality of the dialogue that made it so, which, ironically, many reviews have deducted stars for.

The delivery of the dialogue by Hamish Linklater is also something to behold.

> So what that might mean is that if one is with a person who has just died, a relative or friend, there is still a moment, just a moment, to say good bye and I love you.

Just because there is brain activity doesn't mean there is consciousness. A 10 week old fetus has brain activity. But it is not anything we'd call conscious. If your heart stops or you've stopped breathing, then it's highly unlikely you are conscious. But if it helps one cope with a loved one's death, perhaps there is no harm in letting them believe the deceased could hear your final goodbyes.

Cognition != consciousness (or actually, ⊂ )

The brain might very well be in a weird state at that moment. In that case, it would be best if it is unconscious. Comfort is not high on nature's agenda.

Agree. Comfort's not high, but "survival" is. So it could be a really chaotic intermix of things still working and others not, and still others working in previously impossible states. Pain and possibly torture sound likely.

I wonder if there’s truth to the reports of people after being Guillotined still being able to blink and make facial expressions even though their head has just been severed.

I though everyone knew this? The brain wouldn't just immediately stop working because a heart stopped pumping, there would be some sort of delay effect there.

It seems strange to imagine telling someone who isn't going to experience anything ever again anything at all.

If they listen and notice they experience something right then and there and maybe at that point it's nice to feel loved... a sweet moment for a dying person briefly supercedes the metaphysical confusion of the living.

people are strange then.

At that point I would imagine the words are mostly for the speaker, rather than the listener. Mourning is all about saying goodbye.

All of us will eventually never experience anything ever again. What's the difference between a few seconds and a few years.

this assumes that death is binary: you're either dead or not. this is not how things work. you don't know the precise time duration and what happens unless you are there to experience it. i think the best time to say goodbye and i love you is at any point in time

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