It’s the closest thing I’ve heard people describe as dying so it can be profound.
Incidentally my neurologist said that she had patients that don’t stop their seizures because they feel like they areare mystical or part of their mental work. That’s a wild thought to me given the risks, but I can understand it, given how you feel on the other side.
In ancient Greece, epilepsy was called the "holy disease" and it was believed that gods speak through the patient during a seizure.
They must not have been paying attention during their studies. That discussion has certainly been going on ever since we managed to restart a human’s heartbeat. Philosophers likely have discussed it for centuries, if not millennia, before that.
Modern medicine definitely doesn’t use “has no heartbeat == is dead”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_death#Medical_declaratio... adds “irreversible” to the definition:
“Two categories of legal death are death determined by irreversible cessation of heartbeat (cardiopulmonary death), and death determined by irreversible cessation of functions of the brain (brain death)”
(And, of course, “irreversible” changes as science progresses)
I'll let myself out now.
However I have had always recollection of those seconds or minutes when I was unconscious: there was always an intense and quick succession of memories and images accompanied by sound. At some point the external sound from people trying to reanimate me took over and I was able to gain consciousness again.
I always felt that was how the brain acted before passing away, and also how some literature and cinema were right when depicting flashbacks.
Also, what do you mean by "sound"? Like music or actual sound from your memories?
In my case it wasn’t like dreaming exactly, more like that in between state where you’re falling into a nap but still awake. Sound was kinda like being underwater, in fact recovering consciousness very much felt like surfacing into reality for lack of a better term.
It was kinda cozy, definitely not an experience to be scared of.
As an example, I think I was around 16 years old and I was very much into sport cycling and Tour de France. When I lost consciousness a slide show of Tour de France competition accompanied by the TV commentators rush into my thoughts. All of it at very high speed and extremely overwhelming.
I think of it as an analogy of a memory dump of a process that is no longer running (consciousness), and everything gets just read and dump at high speed and without any sense nor capacity to make sense of it, only leaving a small impression in my short memory area which afterwards I was able to remember for longer time.
When David Eagleman was eight years old, he fell off a roof and kept on falling. Or so it seemed at the time. His family was living outside Albuquerque, in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. There were only a few other houses around, scattered among the bunchgrass and the cholla cactus, and a new construction site was the Eagleman boys’ idea of a perfect playground. David and his older brother, Joel, had ridden their dirt bikes to a half-finished adobe house about a quarter of a mile away. When they’d explored the rooms below, David scrambled up a wooden ladder to the roof. He stood there for a few minutes taking in the view—west across desert and subdivision to the city rising in the distance—then walked over the newly laid tar paper to a ledge above the living room. “It looked stiff,” he told me recently. “So I stepped onto the edge of it.”
In the years since, Eagleman has collected hundreds of stories like his, and they almost all share the same quality: in life-threatening situations, time seems to slow down. He remembers the feeling clearly, he says. His body stumbles forward as the tar paper tears free at his feet. His hands stretch toward the ledge, but it’s out of reach. The brick floor floats upward—some shiny nails are scattered across it—as his body rotates weightlessly above the ground. It’s a moment of absolute calm and eerie mental acuity. But the thing he remembers best is the thought that struck him in midair: this must be how Alice felt when she was tumbling down the rabbit hole.
I was conscious again about 10-15 seconds later. It's the kind of thing that sticks with you your whole life. It probably wasn't close to life threatening, but the combination of adrenaline, sharp pain, and brief unconsciousness definitely leaves an imprint in your memory.
I thought I would gently fall asleep, but it was actually extremely fast. It went from "tell me about your life" which the anesthetist uses to check your state to "oh so came here for uni..." to "huh the surgery is over" in a single cut.
Nothing in between, nothing like that thing you feel when before you fall asleep at night or wake up in the morning. I felt tired when I woke up, but I didn't think I had dreamed or felt anything at all in between.
And some people have a very different experience while under them - they are fully aware.
I understand this knee-jerk reaction very well, but it just feeds the neverending spiral of aggression. We humans act like storage of both good and bad, it then comes back up in various situations.
What I want to say - you just beating up a bully will mean some other kid(s) will get beaten up (or beaten up even more) further down the line. I am not saying love can fix it all, it can fix many things but sometimes once people become broken they just stay broken and there is no real way back.
oh you need to convince them that more beatings would be forthcoming if they step out of line again.
The exact same can be said for good ole Adi. And many of his ilk currently alive.
What you're saying isn't a straightforward universal truth. There's no one right answer. Some of the time, what you're saying is very true. Other times it's very much not. GP's reaction as such isn't "knee-jerk". The equation doesn't suddenly change the second the "evildoer" in question turns 18, or 21.
If you haven't watched the movie, now would be a good time.
The computer effects are amazing (especially considering it was made in 1983), the concept is very interesting, the acting is a bit odd, and... Natalie Wood sadly died during production (her sister stepped in to help complete the movie).
But because it never encountered something like it, it cannot find a solution.
And apparently this is why people when they die see their life flashing before their eyes.
Inspired by this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45797517
vermilingua•6h ago
system2•6h ago
Noumenon72•5h ago
dmacedo•4h ago
But the philosopher of the Internet of today, instead of curiosity of reasoning and arguing for what should change in deontology, and why; sums it up as "ethicists forbid...".
I'd really like to understand your views better on what should change and why...
Especially when there's plenty of ignoring of ethics in today's world!
Noumenon72•3h ago
Ethicists seem worse for the world than actually unethical people because they bind the majority of good people from progressing, which is what gets us out ahead of our baser natures.
beowulfey•2h ago
Sam6late•5h ago
matwood•4h ago
lynx97•3h ago
https://youtu.be/ET71mabgEuM
sokoloff•3h ago
BriggyDwiggs42•3h ago
jbstack•3h ago
In any case, the fact that a significant number of people opt for organ or body donation suggests they are willing to allow their deaths to be useful to others in some way.
lynx97•1h ago
jbstack•1h ago
For some that motivation might be strong enough to be willing to undergo some discomfort (if, indeed there needs to be any discomfort in the first place, which isn't clear). For others, it might not be.
lynx97•1h ago
NaomiLehman•3h ago
vermilingua•2h ago
exe34•2h ago
not all of it, presumably, if you want to express your distaste on the magical glass slab and you want pain killers on your way out.
TheCoelacanth•2h ago
Because they care about leaving behind an impact after they die. I don't think it would be for everyone, but there surely be some people who would want to do this.