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RadioLab did an episode on this topic “Decoding the Void” in 2014 (https://www.radiolab.org/episodes/anesthesia) that, for me, pretty much deconstructed the whole idea of an afterlife in 20 minutes.

What happens when we die? People commonly think of this as some kind of unknowable mystery. But people lose consciousness all the time and aren't entering the spirit world when they do so. If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like. Maybe a very pedestrian thought for some of you, but as a sincere fundamentalist zealot for most of my life, it was a big epiphany for me.

(Disclaimer: I understand some will disagree intensely — I would have been among you ten years ago. I’m not here to invalidate your sincerely held beliefs, only to relate a change in my understanding.)

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That doesn’t really make much sense to me… Seems more like a category error than anything - surely anyone who believes in any kind of spiritual afterlife would expect that death on a spiritual level is something much more than simply losing consciousness? Especially if some kind of omniscient deity is believed to be involved, why would such an entity perform any kind of transference into a spiritual realm when you weren’t properly dead?

No, the real question is, if the mind can exist independently of the body (and the brain), why does consciousness stop temporarily during certain phases of sleep? If the mind can go on even when the body dies, then it stands to reason that the brain being unconscious should pose even less of an obstacle.

> brain being unconscious

That's circular logic no?

In any case, a good counterpoint would be blackout drunk people. They are somewhat conscious, and can interact with their environment, but if you ask them after the fact when sober what happened, it would appear to them as if they were entirely unconscious.

Anesthesia proves the brain is (at least mostly) unable to access experiences that take place when it isn't recording, and that, while our mind is present in the brain, we rely on it for recall. That might be enough to draw the line for some, but obviously not everyone.

> while our mind is present in the brain, we rely on it for recall

People who believe in reincarnation must have accepted this long ago, because they can't remember their past lives, or anything that happens in between.

I'm sure this is well-thought and serious response, but I thought it was pretty funny. Why indeed, although I'm pretty sure most folks in psychedelic (shroom or DMT) would have sworn they're in the spiritual realm and that an omniscient deity deigned to commune with them.

Oh man kids these days don’t remember the days of god v_alpha when we had to put people in caves and roll aside the stone every time they took a nap. So much better now that we upgraded the brainstem firmware to not make that terminate() call.

While the rational side of me thinks that death is probably oblivion, I just don't want to admit it. After a friend of mine passed away, I did a lot of soul searching and basically came to the conclusion that there's nothing after death. It was mentally destructive for me and sent me into a bout of depression. I'd hate to think that we're going through all this just to have your entire life multiplied by 0 at the end. People tell me life is about the journey, but the journey is fun because the memories are retained and can be reflected upon. I just hope that there is something more, if not then there isn't much point in continuing in my opinion.

I concluded that, with high probability, there is life after death. Simple:

1. Current life is clearly possible (cogito ergo sum etc).

2. When this one ends, statistically it's inevitable there will be another one. See e.g. Boltzmann brain [1].

The pickle is that the timespan between 1 and 2 could be very long. But since you're not aware of it that doesn't matter. Also, the other pickle is you won't remember it, and that one really burns.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

1. and 2. are congruent. Where your thesis misses the mark is connecting 1. and 2. with your life after death.

In other words, assert 1. and 2., therefore the human race does not die out when I die.

But, assert 1. and 2., therefore my life will continue seems like a pretty big leap to me.

Another (competing) conception of “consciousness after death” is that (perhaps depending on the manner of death) consciousness continues but degrades further and further into an obscene, wretched stupidity. See https://thelocalyarn.com/article/death-decay-and-the-haunted...

That's just a copy of you though. It's not you. If I offered to teleport you to work every morning, super convenient and free, but the teleporter destroys your body and creates a new identical copy at the other end every time, would you use it?

There's an SF story where someone invents a teleporter, and it becomes very popular, but then one of them goes wrong and doesn't destroy the original body.

A variation on this story was the plot of the very first Star Trek novel: Spock Must Die!

(I think there is a beaten up copy buried in my old closet at my mother's house, from when I was a boy.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock_Must_Die!

This is kind of like the plot twist in The Prestige, great movie

Dude, spoilers!

If I get to keep the qualia yes absolutely.

The copy would keep all your memories and would experience qualia, the question is, is it you? After all, your body was torn apart to extract the information to build the new one. Bear in mind qualia are instantaneous, you don't keep them, only memories of them.

Sorry, I added the example of the SF story while you were replying to my post. In that story now there's two of the same person walking about, both of whom think they are 'him'.

The really disturbing this is, this might be what our lives are actually like. After all, our brains frequently stop being conscious and then summon consciousness back into being. Is it really the same consciousness though? Or is it a fresh newly synthesised process that just has memories from the last time your were conscious?

I still wouldn't use the teleporter though.

> Is it really the same consciousness though?

And to push it further, in what sense is each moment's consciousness the same as the previous?

If we persume that life is completely based on the physical world, then yes consciousness is based on memory and you can somehow replicate the same consciousness which will continue with different experiences.

But if consciousness is based on what is percieved from physical world, then the consciousness can really take different forms, be parallel, be one single consciousness, and even not be dependant on time at all.

I think more interesting concept, than comparing death with being partially unconscious, is losing your complete memory. If consciousness is related on having past memories and experiences, how can we say a person can be conscious and function without having any single recollection of anything that ever happened.

My take on this is that potentially this is true, but we don't understand the nature of consciousness yet.

I prefer to think that there is something beyond a specific configuration of molecules that creates consciousness, but I am unable to understand how that would be able to exist within an individual.

However, I can envision a 'plane' - not a plane of individual consciousnesses, but a field, similar to gravity and electromagnetism etc., and where it is concentrated densely, it creates an individual 'well' of consciousness. When an individual dies, it is my belief that the 'well' ceases to exist, and whatever made up that individual continues to exist as part of the field.

I've got absolutely nothing to support this idea beyond speculation, but it brings me comfort to think that just as though the matter and energy that formed myself and my loved ones exists only as part of a much larger ecosystem of matter and energy, and once our bodies are nothing more than cold soil, our consciousness also becomes part of a much larger ecosystem.

They say that a million atoms that are currently in my body today were also part of Jesus' body. Similarly, I imagine that in 2000 years, parts of my consciousness will also be part of others' consciousnesses.

I've thought the exact same thing!!!

Consciousness is just the trapping of a pocket of some otherworldly field by certain configurations of matter and energy (i.e. a living human brain).

Dying liberates our pocket of consciousness, allowing it to recombine with the free floating consciousness in the universe.

What's important is what we do with the time we have, the ripples we send out into the world. That I think is the true value of our lives

I would like to hear more on this. Am somewhat playing a devil's advocate, but am genuinely unclear too.

What's the higher importance of the impact left on the world. As per the comment you replied to, it will ultimately be multiplied to zero for each one of us. That the impact may sustain in the 'living' world feels somewhat like a propagating wave, or may be even a Ponzi scheme.

Looking from a grander scheme of things, life on earth is more like moss on a stone. If our solar system gets destroyed today, our nearest galaxy would not experience the slightest thing for over a million years, and an astronomically miniscule change even after.

What's the true importance of the impact left over the world?

That is a great way of describing that situation. Thank you for that.

The answer to a lot of these questions seems to be "we don't know". In our age, there's a cultural trend of pretending we know things, or that everything is knowable. Of course, a lot of things aren't knowable. In actual reality, we function while not knowing. Uncertainty is the nature of existence. Practically every decision and experience is loaded with uncertainty. Just as there's no absolute-reference-point (relativity), there's no absolute-knowledge-point, and that's normal.

In this thread, we are making guesses about the purpose of...well, anything. But the reality is we will never know. Or more: We don't even know whether we will ever know.

Not knowing, for me, is comforting. I like the mystery of the universe. There are so many unknowns; many unimaginable, even magical, things are possible. That's the experience a child has. It carries a sense of wonder.

I largely agree. :-)

>> Uncertainty is the nature of existence.

This should be seen as an observation about our universe, not as some kind of law. Existence could have been without uncertainty also. Some of the debates during the older times were like that, as the laws of classical physics have been deterministic. Some people still argue that volition / consciousness links to the non-determinism of Quantum Mechanics.

> If our solar system gets destroyed today

That's a useless hypothetical in my book, we have no reason to believe it will be destroyed any time soon and at the rate we're going, assuming we don't destroy ourselves, in another 1000 years we'll have long escaped the potential destruction of our planet or even our solar system. And a thousand years is a very short time "in the grander scheme of things"

I believe the vast majority of people can not really influence events like nuclear wars or any such extinction events so it's pointless to fear or even take into account. So focus on what you can do better, be kinder to your fellow colleagues, neighbours etc. and find problems and try to fix them in a sustainable way. Those things might seem small but they're important too

Yes, I take it's a hypothetical scenario, at least practically, if not theoretically also. My point with that hypothetical scenario, which I should have more explicitly stated, is to counter points of views I often hear on importance of life to the universe, etc.

In my understanding, it's not about the universe as a whole; only about the impact left predominantly on the lives on the earth.

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

The only true immortality lies in the heads of others. We remember Caesar, Shakespeare, but not Elmer Demonolopos: the chimney sweep. One role of said ripple is to extend your influence from beyond the grave. affecting other's greatly (+/-) extends your influence in life and the space you take in other's heads... take enough space and you can sort of live in the mind's of humanity for as long as humanity exists.

The importance depends on how you value some of our impact in the world. Some people say that life makes no sense if in the end you will be destroyed and disappear forever. I can see that in this scenario, individualism, egotism, and things like these are senseless. But not necessarily life. Humanity as a whole is writing a history in the world. As long as this story continues, we have an impact and our legacies will persist. Memories about us will also persist, specially if you define "memory" as information stored somewhere, not necessarily in a brain, and not necessarily intact and imutable.

About the nihilism that in the end everything will be destroyed... Well, there is a part in the bible where someone says that there are never something new under the sun. Our struggles are equal the struggles that someone before had. Our problems are equal the problems that someone already had in the past. And everything that we do is irrelevant in the end. Which is false, and for us that have access to studies in history, we can easily see that is false. We have new problems in modern times. Our development also turned us less irrelevant. While still astronomically minuscule, we are not anymore worldly minuscule. We have power to change the climate in the entire planet, we can even destroy most life and even ourselves with our technology, we are beginning to explore other worlds. What is the limit? It is unknown. If in the antique world it was easy to be mistaken thinking that the limits that they had were the definitive human limits, why wouldn't be also easy for us being wrong thinking that the limits that we currently have are definitive? Yes, now we have limits on how could we deal with the destruction of our solar system. But we could in the future learn how to survive this. We do not know and never will know what is the limit for what we can achieve. Therefore, believing that all is senseless because our limits will trap us in a dead end is a not very useful unbased claim. This is a case where Pascal's wager makes sense: if indeed we will be unavoidably trapped in a dead end, you lose nothing thinking that there is a way to avoid this, but if we are able to escape the dead end and extinction, it is deleterious to believe that the extinction is unavoidable.

Thanks for a detailed response. :-)

I found the first para specifically reassuring.

Not the guy you were replying to. Why are we assuming any of the impact would be a drive to live and should be of importance to anyone?

Isn't the reason why we live just steering through the unknown and finding what will happen next. Some do more and some do less to affect it, but people usually just wonder what will happen tommorow, what will be in a year, some what will be in 50 years.

We only want to do something impactful when we want to experience the consequences in the future.

I think the not-knowing is what drives us to live. The same thing why we await death so peacefully. It's really the gate we don't know anything about and we just await to sail in.

>> Isn't the reason why we live just steering through the unknown and finding what will happen next.

That's the question the comment I replied to asked. What will (ultimately) happen next is that it will (may) all get multiplied by zero. What's exactly the point of steering through the unknown and finding what will happen next, when we know what's ultimately the next.

Good point, I've answered assuming different context.

FWIW, a framing I like is: Each person wields their taste, skills, character, communities, resources, etc, in the crafting of three great improv art projects: themselves, their life, and their ripples spreading through others and the world.

You might enjoy reading The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. It changed my opinion on almost exactly this topic.

Thank you for the recommendation! Seems like this is the exact problem I'm dealing with. Curious as to how it changed your perspective?

Well, no matter how rational you are, it is still your conscious self that is perceiving the physical world and is just trying to makes sense of it. What happens to "you" after the death is really not related to understanding physical world, or at least not strictly dependant on the physical world. Which, at least for me, it means anything is more possible than just oblivion.

The not-knowing factor (of what happens in your life) is what drives most people to live, so why wouldn't give one a positive drive to actually live life and find out the same thing about death. You just don't skip high school to find out things what life in 40s will be like. :)

Edit: I hope I did't invoke illusion of being religious in any way. It's a purely philosophical way of questioning something you cannot possibly know.

Edit2: Also, other repliers (that obviously read more books than me) explain some really great theories

Memories are retained. If not in your brain, then in the history, in other people's minds, in the humanity's development, and in the legacies that you created. Which is better, your memory can be destroyed by Alzheimer, but these other memories can be more resistant and could survive for a longer time. :-)

I placed a related comment + question here on the same OP. Would like to hear your views too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32252250

Some would argue the exact opposite - that the ephemeral nature of existence makes being alive that much more special. That our finite existence here is a gift to treasure and enjoy and not just something you tolerate while you wait for the "real thing"(eternal existence in heaven or whatever)

I don't necessarily view life as a toleration of living and waiting until death, o hope for a "real thing" after death. I'm more hoping for something along of the lines of a "next phase" like transition from school life to working life. The idea the equation of experiences and knowledge if your life ends with an ...)*0 is just depressing. I'd like to continue to build on my life experiences and reconnect with loved ones, at least in some sense in relation to my individual experience, not a metaphorical one - if that makes sense.

Yeah death sucks and most people aren't ready for it. We can't really know if "afterlife" exists but imo, it's not wise to live life assuming that that is the case. It might be better to do your best assuming you can't tell if there is an afterlife. If there's no afterlife, you did your best and if there is one then it's a bonus.

It's not that life ends in a *0 - it's more that we don't get to know what effect our life has. The not-knowing is the hard part. But a little imagination is all it takes to see that life could have some undiscovered long term effect.

I mean 0 in terms of yourself. If nothing exists after death, the way I view it is that upon your death, from your perspective, time ceases to exist and everything essentially dies, sure the world may continue existing around you but, but from you're perspective, it has effectively ended thus 0. The "greater effect" thing is off less concern to me and just seems to sidestep the fact that the objective you ceases to exist.

which 'you' are you talking about?

you exist as a entity in other's minds: which is arguably a larger pool of 'you' than the you in your mind.

which explains the drive to influence others: when someone does something out of 'remembrance' or a tribute, metaphorically they are 'running your code'. extorting influence through these proxy 'you' in other's minds is the goal of some people...

if you solidify yourself in other's minds you might survive as an idea throughout the years - that's the part of you that lives forever... so update and modify your image in other's minds while you still can.

>> ... and enjoy

This means what exactly in the grand scheme of things. Hormones circulating in the body, creating some perceptions for the mind, where both may cease when the finite existence ends?

And how does life being infinite suddenly make it meaningful for you?

Life means nothing in the "grand scheme of things". It just is. You exist because of a long sequence of random events and then it just sort of ends. There's no deeper meaning, it's just how our universe works. In this brief moment when you get to exist, you can choose to do things which make you feel good.

>> And how does life being infinite suddenly make it meaningful for you?

Good point.

Not about me though, many people derive meaning out of life being infinite, which is what I guess underlies even the conceptualization of reincarnation.

I personally am more inclined towards it being finite, like you said. Under that scenario, the question comes, what do "enjoyment", "happiness", etc. really mean?

>> Life means nothing in the "grand scheme of things". It just is. You exist because of a long sequence of random events and then it just sort of ends. There's no deeper meaning, it's just how our universe works. In this brief moment when you get to exist, you can choose to do things which make you feel good.

I agree in general.

And then I disagree with people viewing suicide negatively. If it just is, just ends, has no deeper meaning, and all the more so is about 'feeling good', then there is (a) nothing negative about someone not feeling good choosing to end it, and (b) nothing negative about choosing to end with a realization that even feeling good ultimately remains meaningless only.

Plenty of NDE reports to keep your hopes up. Unless the whole reincarnation trap and erasing memories is real, that would suck.

How are near-death experiences proof of anything else than brain activity when in a critical state but not yet dead?

IMO it's like saying "exception handlers are proof that Unix processes can't be terminated."

I think you can find stories of patients who have had out of body experiences when there was no brain activity. Not sure how valid those are, but still gives me pause.

The default assumption should be that NDEs are hallucinations in a brain moving towards dysfunction.

The interesting thing about them is similarity across time and cultures.

Why is the similarity interesting? Isn't that rather expected, being about aspects of the brain, as opposed to that of the times or cultures?

I find solace in nothingness after death. We go to bed every night and wake up every morning yet we hate the thought of oblivion or nothingness. The desire for meaning seems like food for ego to me, personally.

endeavor to create somthing beyond your mortality, something that persists in peoples minds and exists in reality, something that proves you were more than just a story.

I placed a related comment + question here on the same OP. Would like to hear your views too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32252250

I think that's why sleep has been called the 'little death' since ancient times. In a sense, you die every time you sleep, and wake up a slightly different person.

Edit: ya'll have dirty minds. Homer refers to 'sleep as the brother of death' in the Illiad. Apparently Buddha said something similar too, though I can't find a source.

Edit2: just going to leave you with this: "each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death." – Arthur Schopenhauer

Of you see a french character speak of having a little death, it isn't about sleep.

To quote the recent BBC series Versailles: "A little death is good for everyone." Louise XIV isn't talking about getting his eight hours.

I understand that expression to have a slightly different meaning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_petite_mort

Ehem, it's not sleep that's called 'the little death', although it tends to happen in the same place :^)

The Schopenhauer quote reminded me of Saucer-like by Sonic Youth. I always found this line beautiful and now wonder if Lee borrowed the idea from Schopenhauer or if it's just a coincidence:

"Every day is just another breath, every night another little death"

I wonder if there was some evolutionary advantage to sleep in making death less scary. If you didn't go to sleep every night, then the idea of suddenly becoming unconscious would be absolutely terrifying.

> If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like.

The experience of general anesthesia is: you go under, and then suddenly you are awake (hopefully) after your operation, with no intervening memories.

I don't see how this tells you what death is like. Death is like the stuff in between when you go to sleep and wake up, which you have no memory of (because there is nothing to remember). Nor is going under general anesthesia like going into death, because you believe with high probability that you are going to wake up, whereas if you are going to die you know you won't wake up.

The point I think that death is just like losing conciseness completely and being just totally gone, and you just had that experience. The only difference is that with death you never come back.

You didn't have that experience though. Or if you did you don't remember anything from it. The whole point of general anesthesia is you don't experience anything while under it.

> If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like

How? Death is obviously very different from your body being alive an unconscious. You are just assuming they must be the same thing. Why make that assumption? The only reason I can think of is that the feeling of “time just skipped” conforms to your pre existing presumption that death will also be like that, but I don’t have that presumption. You would need to argue that death is like losing consciousness, but you haven’t tried to do so, and it’s not obvious at all to me that it is true

I agree. The idea of relating unconsciousness with death is by making the assumption that physical world is what is driving life and consciousness. But since you are the conscious one just perceiving the physical world, physical world really doesn't need to be related to consciousness or doesn't even need to exist.

Since it is a question I don't think can possibly be ever known, all options may be completely possible.

One could argue the exact opposite: the fact that you wake from anesthesia (and sleep) with your identity intact indicates that it still exists even during these periods of unawareness. So if your identity can be restored after sleep and anesthesia, why not after death as well?

(For the record: I'm totally with you that there is no life after death. All I'm saying is it's not a slam-dunk, and it is particularly not a slam-dunk on the phenomenology. You need to know a lot about how the brain works in order to conclude that there is no afterlife.)

> So if your identity can be restored after sleep and anesthesia, why not after death as well?

I don't know the low level details about how the brain works but...

When you're sleeping and are under anesthesia your brain is still an organ that's alive. Your body as a whole exists and is functioning.

I don't think this can applied to death if our definition of death is that your skin, organs and cells decompose into nothingness relatively quickly. Over time you'll reduce into a pile of bones. Your brain, heart, lungs and everything else is long gone.

Your identity can only be restored at this point if you believe your identity is fully detached from your brain, in which case then you may believe your identity will continue to exist in an unknown state that as far as I know has never been measured or confirmed in human history. That is of course where lots of folks have different opinions.

I'm not here to sell anyone on my opinion but I have been under IV based anesthesia before. It's a legit pause button on what we perceive as our memory or consciousness. You drift into sleep within seconds and wake up as if nothing ever happened, then feel a little groggy along with deal with whatever side effects you were put under for and your doctor will tell you what you were responding to requests during the surgery which means you were able to do things like rest your arm in this position or look to the left, etc..

But the takeaway there is your memory has a gap that can't be accounted for. If your identity is composed of your memory and anesthesia is a combination of drugs that affects chemicals in your body to alter your brain into not remembering things then we've scientifically proven your memory is directly tied into your body (brain included), otherwise if it weren't then "you" wouldn't have been paused right?

> Your identity can only be restored at this point if you believe your identity is fully detached from your brain,

Right.

> in which case then you may believe your identity will continue to exist in an unknown state that as far as I know has never been measured or confirmed in human history.

Right again, but note that this conclusion turns on the absence of observation. It's possible that dualism is true and we just have not yet invented the right instruments to measure it. The germ theory of disease, and even atoms themselves, were once treated with the same skepticism for the same reason.

Yes, dualism is false. But ruling it out is not easy.

> your memory has a gap that can't be accounted for

So? My memory has gaps that can't be accounted for while I was awake.

> So? My memory has gaps that can't be accounted for while I was awake.

Yeah, I can't tell you what I was doing at any specific minute of time 15 years ago but I can say I was alive back then, at least to a degree of what we generally accept as alive (ie. I'm ignoring any ideas of living in a simulation and not being alive, etc.).

I don't think memory alone is your identity but I personally think your brain needs to exist and be functioning in its normal state to be able to record and recall memories to a reasonable degree and if your brain decomposed to nothingness I don't think you can still have a brain driven memory.

It's also kind of interesting that we have this idea of your "mind's eye". We have a brain, we know a brain exists and we know where it exists within our body. One could say your inner voice is your consciousness right? It's your ability to understand your own self and world around you. To have an inner dialog and then dictate actions based on a combination of reason and impulses.

What's interesting to me is if you don't think about it, this dialog always happens behind your eyes. It feels like it's projected from where your brain physically exists. I think you can throw this inner voice to make it feel like it's coming from other parts of your body but that's only when you purposely try to do this.

To me this makes me highly think that your brain controls this inner voice and if your brain decomposes to nothingness then this goes with it.

Am I wrong? Maybe but I cannot accept that because something hasn't been proven then it may exist on nothing but faith alone.

> I can say I was alive back then

But that's an inference, not a direct observation. It's possible you turned into a philosophical zombie temporarily without realizing it. How would you know?

> I personally think your brain needs to exist and be functioning in its normal state

Sure, but that still leaves open the possibility that the brain is just a transceiver and the actual locus of your self is somewhere else. That hypothesis is consistent with all observations.

> It feels like it's projected from where your brain physically exists.

Are you sure? Or is this just a reflection of your prejudices? How could you tell?

> Sure, but that still leaves open the possibility that the brain is just a transceiver and the actual locus of your self is somewhere else

I never thought of that but I don't know. This sounds like you're remote controlling yourself from a different location or plane of existence? I think I default to Occam's razor here in that we evolved into a meat bag with a surface level understanding that we can talk ourselves into thinking we exist. Basically we know just enough to be dangerous.

> Are you sure? Or is this just a reflection of your prejudices? How could you tell?

Is this not the same for you? Unless I purposely project it in a different location internal dialogs are visualized or felt as coming from behind your eyes, or more generally in your head region. I feel like this has been a thing for as long as I can remember. No one taught us how to do this, we just do it.

The difference is clear. For anesthesia, it's the same brain waking up. That's not the case with death.

The sense of identity should by default be associated with the brain, not with consciousness, etc.

Yes, I completely agree. My point is that in order to make that statement you have to know that the brain is the mechanism behind identity. This is not obvious a priori. In fact, it took quite a lot of work over several centuries to figure that out.

> If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like

[citation needed]

I used to have a severe drug and alcohol problem. I once drank a bunch of beers and took 3 or 4 times the recommended dose of Ativan. I woke up 24 hours later from a blackout and discovered in that time I had walked to the store and bought more beer and some snacks. I had absolutely no memory of it.

So I'm going to say anesthesia is not like being dead. It's more like switching the memory recorder off.

Aren't paralysis, pain suppression, and amnesia somewhat separately controlled by different medications in anesthesia?

You hope you go under fully.

Yes, that's what I found so fascinating about combining drugs. Nitrous oxide and opiates for example (caution: nitrous is a fire accelerant and what killed Tony Hsieh [1]). I was able to achieve a state similar to hypnagogia [2]. My only point in commenting is that anesthesia is not like being dead, as far as I know - nobody knows what being dead is like. I'm old so my time is approaching. I look at it like my last big trip. Who knows what will happen!

[1] https://www.thewrap.com/zappos-founder-tony-hsieh-surrounded...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

Your experiences only tell you that those were like switching the memory recorder off. It's unclear to me yet how you are able to compare it negatively to the experience of dying.

> compare it negatively to the experience of dying

I'm not sure what you mean by this. My point was I was anesthetized but managed to go to the store, buy things and make it back, something dead people aren't able to manage last time I checked.

Like Nicola Tesla, I believe my brain is a receiver like a radio and I actually exist in a cloud of consciousness that we all exist in, so I don't have as many negative feelings about dying that a lot of people seem to have (people who believe they cease to exist)

I think my use of the word 'negatively' has caused a confusion. Sorry about that.

What I am asking is about your comparison below. You have experienced anesthesia but not death, then how do you say the following?

>> So I'm going to say anesthesia is not like being dead. ...

I anesthetized myself to the point of complete blackout for 24 hours

I walked to the store and purchased things

Dead people don't walk to the store and purchase things

Therefore being anesthetized is not like being dead

Of course.

We are intending to compare only the first part, i.e., going into the period of blackout. The original commentator's [1] is claiming that the experience of death is similar to the experience of going into blackout with anesthesia. And then, for the latter, the person comes back with partial memories of that going-into phase. Hence the original commentator claims that the experience of death has already been witnessed by many alive people.

I am trying to understand your claim that these these two situations are different.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32250773

> The original commentator's is claiming that the experience of death is similar to the experience of going into blackout with anesthesia

I'm not getting your point. I am going to assume that like a lot of people you have a fixed conception of being dead and that is you cease to exist. If you believe that, then I can see how you can compare being dead to being anesthetized.

I'm saying being dead may be far different than being anesthetized:

- You die and cease to exist

- You die and wake up from this computer simulation into an alien world

- You die and wake up in Heaven with the God that you've believed in all your life

- You die and are one with the universal consciousness. You return to the ocean of consciousness like a wave crashing on the shore returns to the sea

- You die and wake up in Nirvana or the body of a pig depending on your Karma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana)

And so on. No one can say being anesthetized is like being dead

I agree with you, under the assumption of afterlife or other possibilities you have listed.

The current discussion is under the thread of the original commenter, which says:

"... pretty much deconstructed the whole idea of an afterlife in 20 minutes."

That is, we are under "if (there's no afterlife)" branch.

I am not personally settled on which possibility is the reality. So I think we are in alignment.

Good. I thought we might be.

> What happens when we die? People commonly think of this as some kind of unknowable mystery. But people lose consciousness all the time and aren't entering the spirit world when they do so.

It's like asking "Where does the car engine's 'brrrrrrrr' sound go when it runs out of petrol?" or "Where does the plane go when it spontaneously disassembles at full speed into a mountain?".

Trying ketamine made me realize that death is probably similar, slipping away into nothingness.

I have to say, as someone who very much believes as you do (no after life or anything related).

The idea of this kinda scares me? I have never been under anesthesia, but I have kinda accepted that at some point in the not too distant future I will likely need to be for my knees and/or carpal tunnel.

But something about being under it basically being like experiencing death just, it reinforces those fears even more of not waking up.

Like you know it's a possibility, but the connection is a bit of a jarring one.

It is times like this that I understand why religion is so strong. Having the belief that when you do die that you will live on... would be one hell of a comforting one.

It is not scaring, because you do not experience anything at all. Time under anesthesia does not exist: it feels like you wake up at the same time you lose consciousness, with nothing in between.

The fear of not waking up is not necessary. When you do not wake up, no fear can exist.

It's usually the pain before dying people are scared of. That is an understandable fear, one that is commonly exploited by humans (e.g. torture).

Hah I just replied the same thing to another comment.

Logically I know that I would not be alive to fear it. But it's the illogical side still afraid of that... fear.

Don't be scared, anesthesia is like a really good nap. I'd do it for fun if it was safe and cheap.

It really just boils down to a fear of death.

I have tried talking to a therapist about this many times and ultimately it comes down to. Fear of missing certain experiences, scientific discoveries, etc. But then logically I tell myself... I won't be alive to fear that?

But then that thought sends me down a spiral on its own.

Like its an illogical fear, the very nature of death you would not have any regrets... since you can't. But... yeah.

It is all kinda of weird.

Agree 100% regarding sleep-like death.

You might enjoy this video: https://www.jw.org/finder?srcid=jwlshare&wtlocale=E&lank=doc...

It’s also the same as what it was like before you were born. I “remember” nothing from that time period, I felt nothing, I was not somewhere else. I simply did not exist, and nor did my consciousness.

> It’s also the same as what it was like before you were born.

1. How do you know this? It doesn’t seem obvious that it would be the same before being born as after death

2. How do you know you just don’t remember what happened then?

>If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like.

Death will be like waking up somewhere else with no sense of time having passed?

That's a misquote/misunderstanding of OP's point. The point was rather that the quality of being in anesthesia is likely very similar, if not the same, as the quality of being dead, i.e. no qualia at all (at least, if anesthesia was done properly).

We could be entering the spirit world but not retain any memories from it.

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