Near death, (maybe) explained? | Hacker News Reader

Near death, (maybe) explained?

salon.com

35 pointskposehn21 comments

I don't understand the title of this post. After reading the article, I don't see a workable explanation presented which accounts for the features of the phenomenon which is described.

I recently read quite a few reports of NDEs for my own personal interest and noted something interesting. Not all NDErs report real events. In one case I read about, a schoolboy who briefly "died" at school reported seeing empty classrooms as he moved down the corridor at his school. Of course school was in and the classrooms full at the time. He knew that himself, but what he saw was different to what was actually happening. This contrasts with the reports in the article where there is apparent independent confirmation of actual details and events.

The reports of people blind from birth having what seem to be visual OBEs are intriguing (it is reported that people blind from birth do not have a conception of what it is like to see, and in fact they do not even "see black").

Even after spending some time reading about the phenomenon I was unable to draw any conclusion whatever. The reports are highly perplexing regardless of your perspective.

I said maybe as I was not sure of the validity of the conclusions - people here on HN are typically pretty good at cutting through the content to find whether or not it is even close to accurate or useful.

What, exactly, does the article conclude, in your opinion? (I'm genuinely asking)

The strongest formulation I can come up with is: "NDE studies also suggest that after physical death, mind and consciousness may continue in a transcendent level of reality that normally is not accessible to our senses and awareness."

However, nowhere in the article does the article's author offer a single/summary explanation of NDEs/OBEs, from what I saw.

At the moment, all it does is provide some talking points.

I'm not really swayed either way, as I don't have sufficient data to make a good conclusion (and I need to do further research into it). I'm actually enjoying some of the comments here as they're providing good insight.

The hand waving swayed me.

If someone insists on speaking with no tangible data, presenting conclusions that clash with occam's razor, then I will be less likely to listen to them going forward.

It's a genuinely interesting read, even if it does lean on the Astonishing Particular Items Of Proof trope more than a little heavily, but the moment it got to the words "in my opinion, the answer is ..." my eyes glazeth over and skim mode began.

Once an author has weighed in with their personal interpretation, the only refutations available will be ad hominem. "I'm not calling you a liar, but I can't think of a way to end this sentence."

The title of the Salon article should be "Near death, unexplained."

It has a number of interesting case studies and is very grippingly written, but though it offers theory after theory, it (attempts to) debunk them all, then ends with maybe we're seeing something from another life (hereafter, nirvana, whatever you want to call it).

This explains absolutely nothing, and provides no evidence against the materialist view of the mind.

<<“The only way she could have had such a perspective,” said Clark, “was if she had been floating right outside and at very close range to the tennis shoe. I retrieved the shoe and brought it back to Maria; it was very concrete evidence for me.”>>

Maybe a NDE brings out what's in your subconscious mind, and she saw the shoe on her way to her hospital room at some point.

"As pointed out by renowned NDE researcher Sam Parnia, some individuals have reported an NDE when they had not been terminally ill and so would have had normal levels of oxygen in their brains."

So those weren't really near-death, were they? Here's what Sam Parnia thinks about NDE's: http://www.skeptiko.com/sam-parnia-claims-near-death-experie....

Maybe [...] she saw the shoe on her way to her hospital room at some point.

Maybe she floated her way into the hospital room? That's what would follow from the text you quoted.

Your response seems like a good example of how we make up just-so stories to rationalize what we want to believe. First the emotions decide, then the brain comes up with reasons.

I don't know if the provocative case studies in the article are as true as the author implies, but whether they're true or not is quite irrelevant to what most people, including most people called scientists, will say about it.

This is an extremely misleading title. The post is a rather long excerpt from a book. Most of the information it contains is more than 10 years old and will be familiar to anyone who has ever been curious enough to read about the subject. The only relatively recent information concerns production of NDE like phenomena through artificial cerebral stimulation (magnetic or with electrodes). This has also been widely reported online over the past few years.

There are a lot of mentions to studies and not a single reference. Quoting from the text: "Studies indicate", "studies [...] have shown", "studies have revealed", "studies indicate" "Studies show" "some of these studies demonstrates" "studies also suggests"

Unfortunately, the author is heavily biased in favor of the soul/spirit explanation, as can be seen by the sudden change of tone when he starts talking about "Materialistic" scientists.

I stopped reading when I got to that term, thinking "what's a materialis... oh, right, it's a REAL scientist". Other than that, a fascinating article, I might finish reading it now.

what's a materialis... oh, right, it's a REAL scientist

Max Planck:

"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck

Pretty sure Planck was a real scientist.

Yes, because untested hypotheses and opinions are always true when they come from a scientist. That's how we know for a fact that Yahweh is 100% real.

Controlled double-blind experimental evidence or GTFO.

> At one point in this experience, said Maria, she found herself outside the hospital and spotted a tennis shoe on the ledge of the north side of the third floor of the building. She was able to provide several details regarding its appearance, including the observations that one of its laces was stuck underneath the heel and that the little toe area was worn. Maria wanted to know for sure whether she had “really” seen that shoe, and she begged Clark to try to locate it.

> Quite skeptical, Clark went to the location described by Maria—and found the tennis shoe. From the window of her hospital room, the details that Maria had recounted could not be discerned. But upon retrieval of the shoe, Clark confirmed Maria’s observations. “The only way she could have had such a perspective,” said Clark, “was if she had been floating right outside and at very close range to the tennis shoe. I retrieved the shoe and brought it back to Maria; it was very concrete evidence for me.”

This sounds like something you'd see in a chain email...

It should be noted that the Pam Reynold case, the portions for which she had the out of body experience (OBE), she was technically not clinically dead. Additionally, following entering the light we have no way of knowing what time-frame this occurred in; how do we know this occurred when she was recorded as having no brain activity.

I find myself flopping between the two camps in a Devil's advocate manner - the evidence really isn't strong on either side. There seems to be many questions raised by NDE's, but seeing as we don't even have a firm grasp on what consciousness is, or where it comes from, to suddenly say "NDE's prove an afterlife, we can maintain consciousness when we're dead" is a very tenuous claim.

Until we can say "This is consciousness, this is where it comes from, this is what we believe to be the main contributors" to make a leap of this magnitude concerning a topic we know little about is simply irresponsible.

Agreed - we need to fight against the (quite human) desire to believe regardless of evidence.

There's enough questions posed at this point that we cannot draw conclusions, so I guess we have to be patient and piece it together over time.

You would think that if there were something real here more evidence of "verifiable" NDE experiences would have become available. Instead articles like this are still rehashing cases from 10 or 15 years ago.

It could be that due to the inherent lack of ability to perform this in a controlled manner it is not being looked at. I can't imagine there's a line of people waiting to be put in a near-death situation for an experience you have ~16% (?) of having, with the risk being death or brain damage.

Even if you could find volunteers, I'd like to see an institute willing to take on the impending lawsuit should something ever go wrong.

But you could put blackboard into operation room, write there result of a few rolls of dices after the patient is unconcious, and clear the board before patient wakes up.

Of course people will argue it's wasting time that is important to heal that person, but if we want to get results, we could invest into one additional person, that will perform this function.

Or we could just put monitor there, showing (not pseudo) random numbers when pacient is for sure unconcious, to minimize costs, and risk of infection becouse of additional person.

If NDEs and OBE are so common (a few percent people experienced it) after year we would have our proof, or we would know it's extremely unprobable. Not that I think right now it's true, but if we can check, why predict?

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