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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 danbruc on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @08:30AM (#35786408)
However, anyone who has done respectable doses of psychedelics probably agrees with me that there’s a bit more to dreams, NDE and afterlife than “random” neurological firings.

Why would that be the case? If anything, it seems to me, taking psychedelics will teach you that tiny amounts of chemicals can drastically alter how your brain works, especially how it perceives the world.

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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by leroy-is-here on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @08:32AM (#35786427)
If tiny chemicals can do that to you, because you ingested them, what about all of the other things you ingest, including sound, which cause chemicals in your brain to make reactions?
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by danbruc on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @08:38AM (#35786485)
I am not sure what you mean, but sensory inputs can obviously affect you. Hearing a bear roar right behind you will probably change you state of mind pretty quickly.
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by whinenot on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @01:45PM (#35791434)
Can confirm. Sleeping in a tent on the Serengeti whilst hyenas and lions prowl around the perimeter of the campground has a noticeable effect on one's sleep pattern and heart rate.
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by Arrath on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @02:21PM (#35791981)
"Probably" seems like a massive understatement.
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by dnc on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @02:26PM (#35792043)
From my own experience, "only" deep and intense breathing for not more than 5 minutes can alter state of mind drastically.
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by skinkestek on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @03:52PM (#35793188)
Am I correct that you meant:

> [...] something as simple as deep and intense breathing for not more than 5 minutes can alter state of mind drastically.

?

Because it seems some people are voting as if you wrote "[...] the only thing that can [...].

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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by dnc on Saturday May 06, 2023 @05:15AM (#35839592)
yes, you are correct, sorry for the ambiguity and late reply.
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by ndsipa_pomu on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @08:36AM (#35786471)
Sounds do have a strong effect on people's emotions, but they don't tend to affect the way in which you think (maybe emotionally) in the same way that psychedelics can do.
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by leroy-is-here on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @08:44AM (#35786561)
Words, transmitted by sound _absolutely_, without a single doubt, can affect the thoughts of an individual. And, of course, horns and loud sounds and noises will also affect the thoughts.
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by ndsipa_pomu on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @08:54AM (#35786659)
Those affect your thoughts, but don't really change the manner in which you think to the same degree that psychedelics do.

I'd grant some exceptions such as a zen student receiving a lesson/koan that drastically changes their thought processes, but I'd argue that the change was already within them and the sound was just the catalyst - the same lesson/koan is unlikely to have similar effects on other people, and certainly not without the recipient having spent time studying that religion/philosophy.

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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by leroy-is-here on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @09:15AM (#35786931)
Do you have any reading for me?
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by ndsipa_pomu on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @09:34AM (#35787188)
Why yes, yes I do

https://prirai.github.io/books/unix-koans.html

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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by abawany on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @06:47PM (#35795222)
Can confirm that the 'urgent'-sounding music and shouting on most cable news channels definitely affects my thoughts for the worse. I also have tinnitus and having the noise on constantly without any discernible source, even after all these years, is not conducive to peace.
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by eimrine on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @08:39AM (#35786495)
Is this a question? If yes, what is the field of possible answers?
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by leroy-is-here on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @08:48AM (#35786597)
Well, the answer is literally that everything you ingest affects you. It affects your body and the body affects the mind. From the food you eat to the words you hear, your body and mind is affected.
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by eimrine on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @08:59AM (#35786709)
That obviously is true, but you are completely ignoring the argument of the person you are answering to. He told that the brain might be learned using effect of some substance by the same principle when Neurophysiologists observe people with damaged brain and realize what the damaged surface is doing. And you are telling that people without brain damages can be observed by Neurophysiologists as well which is just a truism.
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by leroy-is-here on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @09:07AM (#35786812)
I am addressing the original argument. The original premise was mere amusement that such a chemical could exist which could alter the mind. What I’m saying is that there is more than just chemicals which can change your mind.

If you say it is obvious that everything you ingest affects you, then what about time? Both of us are clearly ingesting time, it is simply another one of our inputs. And, of course, it is obvious that time affects our mind and body.

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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by danbruc on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @09:44AM (#35787292)
Both of us are clearly ingesting time, it is simply another one of our inputs.

We are not ingesting time, we are in a certain sense creating it. We constantly observe the world and it changes over time but just observing the world alone is not enough to perceive time. You have to memorize the current state of the world as you just perceived it and later compare your new perceptions with the memory in order to determine that the world has changed in between.

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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by leroy-is-here on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @09:56AM (#35787452)
Observation is inherently a process with time. Without time, observation cannot be done. I’m not sure how observation without time could even be done, with the goal of observation being the measure from one state to another.
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by danbruc on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @10:58AM (#35788491)
Sure, an observation itself takes place in time and over a period of time, but a single observation itself does not capture time. Imagine you would see the world through your eyes and immediately forget about it. The process of seeing itself takes some time as chemistry and biology do their thing, but you yourself would not be aware of time. You would see the world in one state and shortly after in another state but you would be unaware that it changed as you already forgot the previous observation. For all you could tell, the world could be a static timeless place.
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by leroy-is-here on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @11:14AM (#35788797)
I agree with what you say, but do not think it is true for humans. I think this may be true for thinking machines like ChatGPT which do not think, do not observe, unless we give it something to think about. E.g. the thinking machine is just a program which runs its program with our input. In the future, seeing machines will not see unless we give it something to look at.

Perhaps you are right, it is we who create time to observe.

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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by danbruc on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @11:27AM (#35789054)
Humans obviously have the capability to remember so it is hard to imagine what it would be like if we could not. For artificial neural networks it depends on their architecture and use, to be able to get a sense of things changing over time you need the ability to process information from different times at the same time. Therefore the network itself needs some memory that feeds back internally or some outputs of the network must be fed back into the inputs externally or the inputs itself must be from different times.
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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by bluefirebrand on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @01:26PM (#35791100)
It's hard to imagine what it would be like to actually live as something that doesn't remember, but we do have some experience observing people who have lost the ability to remember through illness or brain trauma or otherwise.

In general it seems like attempting to live in human society without memory is a pretty traumatic experience. Or it would be, if you could remember experiencing it.

It's also very hard on the people around you.

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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by kelnos on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @05:02PM (#35794157)
Sure, everything you ingest affects you. But I think most people wouldn't expect drinking some clean water to cause them to hallucinate. Ingesting a chemical like LSD that is known to affect the brain in certain ways is different.

Put another way: all things are not equal when you ingest them.

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Re:Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death ... by kelnos on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @05:00PM (#35794127)
I would think there's a difference between regular stimuli (through touch, sound, sight, taste, smell) causing your brain to react -- possibly drastically, and deliberately changing your brain chemistry in an "unnatural" way by taking drugs.

One chemical change is caused by the brain working as designed, while the other is a deliberate attempt to change the brain directly.

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