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A comment on Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences. Parent comment

Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by leroy-is-here on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @08:29AM (#35786398)
I don’t understand the why anymore. More than 2000 years ago, we understood that we must be a sum of parts and that kind of idea yielded the atom. We applied the atom to many kinds of structures to discern their nature. Now, atom means some scientific particle.

We simply have more things to name, but still constantly run into things we cannot name yet. We think this will end but it will not. If our universe is ever expanding, how can it?

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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by ndsipa_pomu on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @08:31AM (#35786413)
> We think this will end but it will not. If our universe is ever expanding, how can it?

Heat death of the universe?

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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by ajuc on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @08:50AM (#35786615)
> still constantly run into things we cannot name yet.

Humanity has the opposite problem - we invent names for things that don't exist. We have no idea what dark matter is, but we have a name handy just in case. Same with gods, elves, dragons, aliens, etc.

I can't find one example of people not being able to name something that exist. Worst case just name it "phenomenon X" where X is the first unused integer.

I can find lots of examples of people naming things that don't exist. See phlogiston and ether for example, if you don't like fantasy and religion.

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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by ndsipa_pomu on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @09:03AM (#35786765)
> I can't find one example of people not being able to name something that exist

How about "The smallest positive integer not definable in under sixty letters"?

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

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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by leroy-is-here on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @09:00AM (#35786722)
I think we have both problems, actually. We definitely have names that are good, like New York, Justice, Earth, Peace, Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker.

But we also have names of things which are bad, because they are false. These the are names which are you talking about.

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