h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

in my absence, it seems that everybody is ganging up on annie

some TV program gave me this explanation of near death experiences:
brain shuts down --> awareness of non-self [the world around you] decreases --> the mind focuses on self --> replay of memories ["see lift flash before one's eyes"].

about amanda's idea that:
all human brains have the same basic neurobiology, so it makes sense that everyone [across cultures] experiences the same things during death or near death.
petey formerly known as i THINK now known as ? responds with this:

AGREED.
the process of dying induces the same biological/chemical changes in all human brains and it is this commonality that is the essence of near death experiences.

to annie:
i still think you're ideas rock!
but, about the idea that spirituality includes creativity and abstract thinking and emotions, can't all of these be easily explained by physical [brain] and mental [mind] without invoking anything beyond this? for ex, abstract thinking and creativity is possible b/c of our huge complex neocortex and emotions stem from limbic system functioning.
so, my take is that people take the most seemingly mystical or magical correlates of the human brain/mind and erroneously think that these must have a basis on some higher power/sprituality.

whadaya think?

? out

I am not denying that your life may flash before your eyes and you may see images of comfort, but then you just start to die and your brain does the same thing as the dying bloke's next to you.
Its chemical. Lack of oxygen etc.

Hmmm
My life didn't flash before my eyes. that's not a common near death expereince, it's a myth.

"about the idea that spirituality *includes* creativity and abstract thinking and emotions, can't all of these be easily explained by physical [brain] and mental [mind] without invoking anything beyond this? for ex, abstract thinking and creativity is possible b/c of our huge complex neocortex and emotions stem from limbic system functioning."

Can't it be both?
you seem to be saying how it works biologically but now why

Perhaps we ought to define the near death experience.
Here I am having had one and here are others who haven't and they're telling me how it was/is. This is funny.
How would it feel if I told you something you had experienced that I haven't, didn't happen?
You're making assumptions like, the experience includes life memories, and it wasn't that way for me.

I don't believe what I believe because it's "comforting", I believe it because I think it makes more sense than to say that we have some kind of divine, spiritual essence which somehow makes us special. The main argument for this seems to be that we human beings have a more conscious awareness of ourselves and our surroundings than other living creatures. Compared to animals like apes and chimps, we are, by our own standards, remarkably sophisticated. But apes and chimps are, by their own standards, also remarkably sophisticated compared to animals like squirrels and raccoons. Squirrels and raccoons are also, by their own standards remarkably sophisticated compared to animals like worms and ants. What I'm trying to say is that this whole sentience thing is completely relative - it's a scale with different degrees of awareness. Just because we feel as though we have a unique level of consciousness, doesn't mean we're actually at the top of the scale.

Maybe marmots feel exactly the same way and don't realise that there are other animals with more sophisticated minds than them. So why does our supposedly superior and unique level of consciousness endow us with some kind of spiritual significance? I don't believe we are any more significant than any other living creature on the planet.
Sorry, that was a bit of a ramble, but you get the idea.

annie,

good point about pulling stuff out of nowhere without personal experience
ok. i'm in no position to tell you or anyone what a NDE is like.
i guess my take [as well as amanda's] is that of the neurobiological correlate of the experience. you know, the shutting down of neural functioning coinciding with the subjective experience during near death events.

about your response to my contention that creativity and stuff are just emerging phenomena from complex information processing of our huge neocortices...and your response that this is just one way of looking at it...with spirituality being another way...
i'll buy that.
i suppose that even for a single person, there are multiple realities, all of them equally "real".

? out

I've never really been able to get a handle on the multiple universe theory, but that doesn't mean it isn't a possibility
I suppose the idea is to keep your mind open, but not so open that my brain falls out !!

I suppose that it's also a theory that animals are equal to mankind in all areas and that they just keep quiet about it.

Like the logic of the close down of the brain at death and then zilch, it's an idea, but although I can see the reasoning behind that medically speaking, I can't see any obvious justification for the animal theory.

about multiple universes or multiverses , i read this once:
For every event, no matter how small, if there is more than one outcome, then EACH outcome actually occurs, splitting off into another universe in the process... so, universes are continually being formed and the number of universes would be so high as to be inconceivable to us...
this would make amanda do this , i'm sure!


hey, are you able to describe your NDE in words such that people like me, who haven't had such an experience, could understand it better?

I don't buy the multiple universe theory.
It's definetly a thought.
We would be flitting from universe to universe if this were so. Other amanda's and annie's and Petey's would be everywhere and would have to interact. Would memories not be the same and so we would not be able to intereact as we do cause we would all have different memories of the past and would have had different life experiences.
OR are you saying that new amanda's and annies and peteys are created and so we stay where we are?

OR have i got the plot completely wrong ?

Amanda out,

AMANDA

your 2nd idea
"OR are you saying that new amanda's and annies and peteys are created and so we stay where we are?"
is what i'm talking about

brace yourself for another peteY diagram!

TIME---------------------------------------------->

at a star trek experience

---A single event------------------------2 possible OUTCOMES

---------------------------------------Amanda thinks, "How cute!"
---------------------------------------So, she buys one.
-------------------------------------------/
Amanda comes across-------/
a bunch of tribbles on
sale for 15 pounds each.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Amanda thinks, "15 pounds
------------------------------------for a F-ing tribble!
------------------------------------No F-ing way!"
------------------------------------So, amanda doesn't buy one.

-------------------------------------BOTH OF THESE OUTCOMES HAPPEN.

THIS REALITY, BEFORE
YOU DECIDED WHETHER OR
NOT TO BUY A TRIBBLE
-------------------------------------SPLIT INTO
--------------------------------------------2 DIFFERENT REALITIES, BOTH EQUALLY REAL
--------------------------------------------BOTH COMPLETELY SEPARATED FROM EACH OTHER.

SO, DO YOU BUY IT NOW?

peteY out?

Amanda,

peteY's heading home pretty soon, then i'm back in 12 hours for more pain and punishment

hope you have/had a good workout! and 7 kg is about 15.4 pounds, which is about 1/8th of my 120 lb in each hand
i have HUGE pecs

talk to you later!

PeteY

that's what balls do.

likewise, MINDS ARE SIMPLY WHAT BRAINS DO

annie,
i think you'll find this perspective interesting. i've noted that it does NOT really conflict with your ideas, however...spirituality is not really discordant with what this dude says...

amanda,
did you take your tylenol yet? i think you'll like this article, too b/c you think like me and i like it

To comprehend the relationship between mind and brain, we must understand the relationship between what things do and what things are; what something does is simply an aspect of that thing considered over some span of time.

When we see a ball roll down a hill, we appreciate that the rolling is neither the ball itself, nor something apart in some other world - but merely an aspect of the ball's extension in space-time; it is a description of the ball, over time, seen from the viewpoint of physical laws. Why is it so much harder to appreciate that thinking is an aspect of the brain, that also could be described, in principle, in terms of the self-same physical laws? The answer is that minds do not seem physical to us because we know so little of the processes inside brains.

this marvin minsky dude at MIT came up with this idea.
i read part of his article and i was quite impressed.
now, this stuff is at a completely different level than drubach.

http://www.leaderu.com/truth/2truth03.html

Life is an illusion, so make the illusion work FOR you, not against you.
_____Annie aka hasselfree

that quote is in there b/c i copied this post from one of my e-mails to susY and i have that quote as my autosignature!

peteY out!

I take Fluoxetine, and no I have not yet, thanks for reminding me.

I have a small part of the said article and have noe got a headache

I will finish it later.
Right now I am in need of some elixier.

Amanda out.

Okay, so how come nobody told me about this conversation?



Same goes for your computer and my computer, but when it goes down we get the same messages.

There are three views of the spiritual

1} It doesn't exist
2) It's a separate reality
3) It's another take on the same reality.

I go with (3).

What is 'material reality' anyway? Talking about souls as immaterial entities tells you zilch if you can't characterise a material entity.


Noggin out

hey Noggin the Nog!

i didn't tell you about this conversation b/c i didn't know you exist

i, too, think of spirituality as another take on the same thing.

a ball rolls. God does not make the ball roll.
a brain thinks. God does not make the brain think.

of course, as you pointed out, brains think. that is universal.
but, the content of thought differs.

peteY out!

by a woman if she's really pi$$ed off at the man.


AMANDA

how much Fluoxetine do you take?
i take Citalopram 40 mg every night.

what kind of Elixir did you take? is it magical?

so, how do you like the analogy? i it!
i it so much, i can't repeat it often enough!

A BALL ROLLS. GOD DOES NOT MAKE THE BALL ROLL.
A BRAIN THINKS. GOD DOES NOT MAKE THE BRAIN THINK.

PeteY out!

The confusing thing about thinking is that we do it on more than one level.

Cause and effect (the ball rolls down the hill) may appear to send us into a direction we *feel* may be unavoidable.

Thinking is the manifestation of free will.

We get to experience diverse things, but we get the freedom to think about them as we choose to.
We can choose to think about an experience as 'terrible' and feel it as such, or we can look at it laterally and CHOOSE to see it as illusory and decide that it was a so called blessing in disguise.
Often things we consider terrible or painful can change in restrospect anyway.

I'm not certain that I want to share my NDE experience, because it is my own experience which holds some significance for me and nobody else.
The feeling i get is that if I were to write it, somebody would feel the need to trample it then I'd be obliged to feel slightly miffed.
I do not understand this need.

When I recounted it to someone years ago they told me that it wasn't 'real'. He told me that at the point of death we all endure agonies as the soul is torn from our bodies, like a thin veil ripped from a a thorn bush.
I told him that in my experience this was nonsence and that death is a 'pleasant'/just another' experience.
He choose not to believe me and was very adamant, choosing to believe in the agony rather than the ecstasy ! .
I'd 'seen' it, he hadn't.
He became very defensive, which puzzled me, he was determined to stick with his agony theory at all costs which included shredding my experience.
"I had dreamt it"
"I was anaethetised by drugs."
My brain was filling in a void with things I heard afterwards.
my brain cut out from lack of oxygen had somehow manufactured this experience which other separate people had also experienced.
(Yes I have heard them all before ! )
He manufactured any number of reasons to explain that what I had experienced did not happen.
so I stopped talking about it.
Until recently here ,and it appears that people don't change, they have to demolish something that is pleasant, to believe in the negative.
They stick to their agony theories or their 'end of all things' theories like comfort blankets.
Why this happens is a mystery to me.
I don't take mood enhancers. I believe that you can choose to manufacture your own seratonin/endorphins
It worries me that if we take a drug we loose the natural abilty to produce what is missing ourselves.
like watching hours of television and the imagination of others, reduces the tendency to be imaginative in children.
Why use your own imagination, if somebody else will do it for you ?

Take cannabis for example. This makes us laugh. That is the best thing about it. But take the cannibis away and we have somehow lost the ability to laugh ourselves. We suddenly need chemicals to find life funny , because we have lost the knack of our own sense of humour.
waffle waffle

"When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do."
William Blake