all neuroimaging equipment has fundemantal flaws. EEG is good for some things, fMRI for others, etc. Brain function is something that is extremely hard to measure, and even with the tools we have, the statistics involved in isolating signals and similar things are not perfect.
It can still be argued that until better equipment is built we can assume that they are dead. Bare in mind a flatline EEG is not the only measure, we also look at the heart and we know that the heart needs to keep pumping blood to the brain to keep it working. During clinical death the heart isn't beating and other organs are not functioning. Still based on what we know its up to people to prove that the person is alive. I'm pretty sure alot of equipment have had flaws but people still used their data until better versions were created.
The argument could still be applied to Mars. I'm pretty sure they haven't looked everywhere and below the surface but nobody really cares if you argue theres no life on Mars.
__________________ Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.
- General George Patton Jr
Couldn't they publish outside peer review? Like, these studies must be floating around somewhere.
Eyewitness testimony is hugely unreliable, especially if people have been hanging out with a group that favors one side over the other. One experiment in the 70s planted completely fake events in peoples memories. They were shown a picture of a car at a "yield" sign (yellow triangle) and then were asked about the "stop" sign (red octagon) in the picture. They became convinced that it had been a stop sign all along.
In the same way someone might nearly die and just experience little flashes of light as they passed out. A NDE believer might accidentally talk them into remembering a more elaborate course of events. And, yes, if the person saw something clear a skeptic might convince them that it was just flashes of light.
Eyewitnesses are a terrible thing to rely on, ultimately providing very little proof in favor of one series of events over another unless you have hard evidence to back them up (consider the impossibility of resolving a "he said, she said" case). They're allowed in courts partly because juries like people better than evidence and partly because crimes aren't controlled situations so you have to take whatever evidence you can get.
As for the "millions of people saw it" argument. I just watched a Penn and Teller magic show on TV. Millions of people saw them do things that seem impossible but that doesn't prove or even hit at Penn and Teller being wizards.
__________________
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Last edited by Symmetric Chaos on Nov 27th, 2010 at 08:32 PM
I think they do for example Dr Jeff Long has published books. There are probably loads I guess.
It depends my point is that you cannot make that case for all of them because there are far too many. In one of my articles it talk about situations were memory can be unreliable and when it can be reliable, therefore one shouldn't always rule it out. You can also determine the reliability of eyewitnesses depending on contradictions.
As Sam Parnia himself states in my video its unlikely that they are all making it up, there are far too many. Sam Parnia stated in the video he didn't believe that NDEs were real. Also the whole reason why NDEs are accepted as a pehenmonon is via anecdotal evidence.
__________________ Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.
- General George Patton Jr
Last edited by Deadline on Nov 27th, 2010 at 08:47 PM
ok, but this insistance you keep making on classifying people as dead or alive is moot. it doesn't matter what we call them. Us saying they are dead is not evidence of a soul or any of the things described in an NDA being real, it simply means that humans call them dead. You can say a flatline EEG means they are "dead", what ever.
EEG doesn't work very well in this situation for a couple of reasons.
1. Unless you can show me otherwise, EEG readings are coming from equipment that is using a small number (3) of electrodes to read brain activity. When people do psychological research, to try and detect VERY small electrical signals, they use caps with dozens of electrodes. So, in these clinical settings, with only a small number of electrodes, you are not going to have close to enough power to detect what would be small and localized nuronal activation (more on this below). Further, it would be impractical to have a near-death potient equipped to a full EEG headset all the time, and it takes at least 20-30 min for experienced researchers and subjects to get the system on, meaning as someone is going into cardiac arrest, it would be unethical for doctors to try and get the system on someone. Now, it makes a lot of sense that doctors would use a much less sensitive tool than researchers, but if you are trying to argue that small amounts of brain activity are not causing NDEs, clinical EEG set ups and no pulse are not good examples. Unfortunatly, it would be unethical to do things like fMRI on dying people, which might support your argument, as it can detect very small levels of activity.
2. Which brings up, even in terms of equipment available to look for brain activity, EEG would be one of the least effective. It is obviously the easiest to use in a clinical setting, but it sums electrcal activity up over an area to produce a signal, and small activations can be missed. As sort if a mnemonic we learn, eeg is good for temporal bad for spatial, fmri is good for spatial, bad for temporal. We don't know how little activation is needed to produce what would be remembered as a NDE, and because of the way our brains fill in events, I'd wager it is not a lot.
And in terms of our brain filling in events, yes, obviously I'm not saying our memory is 100% wrong all the time, but like, this isn't your normal brain experience. This is like your eyewitness telling you the colour of the guys car, and he's blind.
So, this guy named Gazzanaga did a bunch of experiments on epilepsy patients who had their corpus collosium cut to stop their seizures spreading from one side of their brain to the other [the corpus collosium carries most of the information between the right and left side of the brain]. Because our eyes encode visual information on the oposite side [ipsolaterally: basically, what is seen on the left side of vision is processed on the right side of the brain], he could show different images to each side of the person's brain, and they wouldn't be able to communicate, because the corpus collosium was cut.
Now, we have what Gazzanaga called a "narrator", that puts together our explanation of the world around us, which is on the left side of our brain. So, when asked what they were looking at, the split brain patients could only report what was presented in their right cisual field. But, because the right side of the brain controls the left hand, if you had them point with their left hand to a picture of the object they saw, they would point to the image in the left visual field.
What is amazing, is you could then ask these people "You said you saw [the image in the right visual field] before, and you pointed to [the image in the left visual field], why was that?", and the subject's reply would be this hugely convoluted story about how as a child his dad once said there was this connection... blah blah blah.
So, people experiencing an NDE could have small activations, that, when remembered, because of this narrator, are complex events. Our memory systems work to elaborate on what are even false memories, so even the act of trying to remember what happened would cause new memories to be formed. Whatever you want to say about what this means for our memory systems, sure, but the fact is, even under optimal conditions, our memory is highly subject to distortions and elaboration, and "while dying" is hardly an optimal condition.
(most of this from Gazzanaga, M (2007?) Lecture at Wilfrid Laurier)
You're missing the point though. It doesn't matter whether you think they're are alive or dead the fact of the matter is there is no sign of life. There is no sign of life on Mars therefore we assume there is none even though there might be. I don't need to prove that there isn't any sign of life on Mars you need to prove there is.
It's still the best you have at the moment. Some of the equipment used to detect life on planets in our solar system probably suck even more, still doesn't change the fact that people have to prove there’s life if you can't detect any.
I already addressed this point. Even if you don't put an EEG machine to some bodies head its a scientific fact that it takes seconds for the brain to shut down. I don't know how they came to that conclusion but since I keep going on sites that are not related to NDEs, or sites that are skeptic and they all say that the brain shuts down in seconds I'm going to assume its a scientific fact. I don't know exactly how they came to that conclusion but I would suspect that they have a good understanding of how the body works and they made a calculation. Galileo never went to the moon but he knew there was zero gravity there. These scientists think that that the brain shuts down even if they haven't put an EEG machine to there head I'm assuming that there is a good reason for the conclusion they made. Since there is a consensus that it take seconds for the brain to shut down and they probably know more about the human body than you do I'm going to assume they're right.
Also I already said that you have controlled cardiac arrest and in the case of Pam Reynolds we know she had an NDE when she had a flatine EEG.
The equipment may suck but its still the best we have at the moment. There are also other measures that indicate that the brain isn't working. During clinical death they're not breathing, the heart is not beating and blood is no longer being pumped to the brain. They may not be dead during clinical death but they sure as hell look like it. If it looks like a duck and it acts like a duck its probably duck, hey it might actually be a swan but until there is further proof its a duck.
The problem with that example is you know specifically that the person is making up that story because of his condition. As long as somebody doesn't have brain damage they can recall what happened for NDEs. However false memories are not exclusive to the example you have given.
The problem with that argument is that even though messed up states of mind may make you remember things incorrectly it doesn't mean that they will cause you to wildly embellish events. Boxers get knocked out all the time, when they get knocked out what they remember is usually something like light, referee counting, blackness etc. I don't think there is one boxer ever in the history of boxing that has had an OBE, there might be but what they usually visualise is the previous stuff I mentioned. When somebody is pissed drunk they can remember events incorrectly but what you will notice is that sometimes they see things the way they want eg they act like a dick at a party but they remember themselves being charismatic and suave.
The brain can shutdown within 3 seconds. Within 3 seconds you don't even have time for the brain to embellish events. If you suddenly got stoned for 3 seconds what you would most likely remember is just feeling nauseous or dizzy for a short time, you wouldn't suddenly have an OBE. Also false memories and hallucinations can be activated by the same thing, motivation. An Atheist has no motivation to create a false memory of an NDE, neither does a three year old child because it does not have a clear understanding of what the afterlife is.
That is an unlikely explanation for all the millions of NDEs that have occurred.
__________________ Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.
- General George Patton Jr
your argument seems to hinge on the idea of the brain undergoing this instantanious "off" during, what, cardiac arrest?
this really doesn't makes sense though. At a cellular level, our systems contain enough energy to run without the heart for a limited time. Without oxygen, the brain can go for 4 minutes before starting to attrophy (learned as a lifeguard) and frankly, again, there is no way anyone could have proven our brain shuts down in "seconds" [sic], as there aren't any studies using powerful enough equipment to say for certain the brain is "off", and it would flaunt ethics to even try.
your comparison to searching for life on mars is problematic as well. If the entire extent of your argument was "we can't see neural activity, therefore there is none", I would disagree with you in terms of opinion, but I don't have any fMRI studies of dying people, however, this would be comparable to the search for life on mars. The problem is, you are trying to say the lack of evidence of brain activation is proof that brain activity can't be the cause of a specific phenomenon, which would be like saying: we haven't been able to find life on mars, so we know there will never be life on mars, and therefore the signs of life we see on mars are really signs of life on Venus. The logic just doesn't hold.
EEG, simply, just isn't a powerful enough tool to make the claims you are making, and that would be if it were used in the most careful experimental settings.
and further, all you have done is managed to get me to take a position, then made a rather futile attempt to discredit it. There is certainly zero evidence that what is experienced constitutes anything other than disturbed processing, and raising concerns with what I might believe on the matter has done nothing to make your position more credible.
The article you posted reminded me so much of that Utts paper. "Here we are, 30 years on after intense study, and all we can say NDEs have in common are these ambiguous and abstract conceptual things, we have no possible mechanism, no real consistent results, and our results are explainable through other means. BUT, this means we need to investigate MORE!"
sure, keep investigating. however, "the atom can't be split" - > Hiroshima, less time.
OH, and just as a point of fact: people elaborate on false and real memories all the time, it is how memory works. Our memories are extremely flawed. I can do a properly cited post for you if you'd like, but compared to some of the extreme results that have been seen with the implanting of false memories into subjects, what I am proposing is not a stretch at all. This would constitue a very mundane type of elaboration.
Hopefully I will respond to the post later but I need some clarification on what you mean on a specific part. Do you mean there is no life on Mars and there never will be any life on Mars therefore we use the same criteria to decide wether there is life on Mars for Venus?
__________________ Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.
- General George Patton Jr
what I am saying is that you made a good point. You are correct, in science, the lack of evidence for something is taken to mean there is no phenomenon. Therefore, as it is true that no signs of life implies that we don't assume there is life on mars, similarily, no signs of activation in the brain would indicate the a priori position is that we do not asuume there is activation. If this was the end of it, you would be entirely correct.
We would disagre in terms of theory, and I might point out that EEG isn't a good tool to analyze this (the same way you could point out that the Mars rovers arent designed to test for life), but ultimately, there is no evidence to support the notion that the brain is still producing activity (however, I don't know if the onus is entirely on me, you might have to produce better reasoning for why it wouldn't continue to be active (default state), as it doesn't strike me as very plausible that the entire brain shuts off in a matter of seconds, especially in response to something like cardiac arrest... idk though).
The problem is, there is a huge difference between absence of evidence for something and evidence that something doesn't exist. So, to use the life on Mars example, this would be like saying, "we can't see any, so it isn't there", which is a logical fallacy. So, for you to say "we cannot detect brain activity, therefore there is no brain activity" is also false. Now, this point becomes more and more academic the more we investigate a phenomenon, but in terms of both life on Mars and brain activity during death, we have so little in terms of real data that the lack of evidence is clearly not enough to state that they don't exist.
However, you take the argument a step further. Not only are you making the logical fallacy that "because our limited tools cannot detect something that is hard to detect in optimal settings, we can therefore conclude it doesn't exist" [applicable to both life on mars and brain activity at death], you are using that fallacy as the basis of your argument to explain a different phenomenon.
So, imagine that we were seeing strange atmospheric readings around Mars. We don't know what is causing it. How convincing would the following logic be: because we have already accepted that "no proof of life means there is not life" (the fallacy described above), we must conclude that the atmospheric disturbances are coming from life on Venus.
It is obvious how poor this argument is. 1) it is ignoring the fact that the phenomenon we are trying to explain (atmospheric readings) are actually evidence for the position that is being dismissed (life on Mars) and 2) atmospheric readings on Mars are in no way connected to life on Venus, or at least, it would take a huge amount of explaining to describe why Venutian life would be impacting Mars' atmosphere.
Now, if we flip this back to brain activity. you are making the point "no proof of activity means there is no activity", therefore, we must conclude that this other phenomenon (the experience of an NDE) is explained by a different thing (souls or what have you).
It is errorous for the exact same reasons. 1) the fact that people experience something during brain death is exacly as supportive of the idea that there is a soul as it is supportive of the idea that the brain is still active. Both theories explain what would happen, and you have given no reason to abandon the theory of brain activity aside from the fallacy of "no signs of activity means no activity". The fact that people experience NDEs could easily be seen as evidence for brain activity for the exact same reasons you think it supports the idea of a soul. 2) you have given no reason for anyone to think that a soul might be a plausible explanation anyways. There is no reason at all to think, much like the influence of venus on mars, that a soul exists and can influence human perception.
The point of that quote was to try and emphasize the fallicies you are making in your logic.
EDIT: to put this in perspective, I have commonly argued that, after 30 years of investigation, the fact psy has produced no conclusive results is strong evidence it doesn't exist.
This is NOT a conclusion of science, but rather of mine, personally, based on history and philosophy. Much like exactly what I have argued above, the absense of evidence in psy research does not mean there is no psy phenomenon.
On the flip side, if people had put 30-40 years of fairly intense and exhaustive research into whether there was brain activity at the time of death, or life on mars, I'd say we could be much more confident in choosing to accept or reject their existance.
__________________ yes, a million times yes
Last edited by tsilamini on Dec 2nd, 2010 at 08:08 PM
Is there any evidence of out of body experiences? For example has anyone given details of events that they weren't privy to as they were incapacitated during said events?
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Looking at you.
I have heard, that a small % of people who claim to be able to leave their bodies are able to report things they would not otherwise be able to see. However, this % falls under the number of people just guessing about what they might see.
It seems debatable. To their credit NDE believers usually say "we have these statistics" rather than "we don't need evidence". Unfortunately NDE research is difficult because you have to either rely on self-report (which tends to be a bit unreliable, especially after/during stressful events like dying) or stick a dying person in an fMRI and watch what happens (which is extraordinarily immoral).
So I'd say we have no strong evidence to support it and the typical skeptic position is that if there is no good reason to believe you shouldn't believe. Interesting things must be happening when the body and brain are in extreme circumstances but due to the nature of those circumstances it is very hard to study them. NDE researchers might turn up some cool things.
__________________
Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
the data that suggests that out of body experiences, or remote viewing, are actually a person escaping their body is scant, ambiguous, and often either indistinguishable from chance or plagued by poor methodology on the experimenters side. I think if you dig through the "atheism" thread, deadline and I go over some of the evidence he presents in support of the idea.
on the other hand, neuroimaging studies have isolated a part of the brain responsible for making you feel like you are inside of your body. if that area activates irregularly, an out of body experience is a potential outcome.
further, researchers are able to induce an out of body experience in people by setting up a camera behin them and allowing the subject to see over their own shoulder with VR goggles.
the evidence tends to suggest that out of body experiences are a normal product of brain activity, while the evidence suggesting it is anything "paranormal" is very weak.
God is eternal; He has no beginning and no end. He is the Self-Sufficient of all those who are self-sufficient; before the creation He was not bored... He thought His Supreme thoughts that are His alone.
From the perspective of my religion, it is impossible for us to comprehend all that God is.
"Behold, great and marvelous are the works of the Lord. How unsearchable are the depths of the mysteries of him; and it is impossible that a man should find out all his ways. And no man knoweth of his ways save it be revealed unto him..." Jacob 4:8.
It is plain and simple, as humanity, it is impossible for us to comprehend infinity (at least in this context). But to answer the question, I believe that God is not necessarily completely unique. I believe that everything we know, or ever could know in this life was created by God, but there are other....for lack of a better word "universes", an infinite number where another "God" created everything.
God started like us, he had a God who created everything for him, and through repentance he became perfect, and ascended to be like his God, and we can do the same. This process has been going on for eternity.
I am hesitant to post this, because I know some of you will think this sounds crazy or even stupid. But it is what I believe.
Wrong! Wasn't making that argument even explained what I was specifically arguing numerous times through the debate.
You haven't understood the argument and you're creating an argument I haven't made. This is what you're doing.
A: I think humans should be more compassionate.
B: Thats silly you think we should go up to complete strangers and kiss them on the cheek?
A: Thats not what I said.
B: Yes but you said compassion
A: ....why are you reading things into my argument I didn't state. Of course it's a bad idea to kiss strangers on the cheek
No I'm not. However I'll leave it there for now.
If you thought it was just your personal opinion you wouldn't have asked for evidence that there was institutional prejuidice. I don't know why you're saying now it's just your personal opinion.
You don't believe in psi (theres nothing wrong with that), you don't think it will ever proven and you probably think the concept is inherently illogical.
I pretty sure you stated that you thought it was plausible for there to be at least alien bacteria on other planets what you had a problem with is aliens like us.
__________________ Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.
- General George Patton Jr
Last edited by Deadline on May 19th, 2011 at 12:02 PM
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Nov 27th, 2010 08:14 PM
