As a compliment to the thread about near death experiences I’d really like hearing people’s experiences of losing consciousness under general anesthesia and what’s it like coming back.

Also interested of things anesthetists may have noticed about this during their career.

  • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyzOP
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    I just talked about this on other thread but I find the non-experience of general anesthesia to be quite comforting in two ways.

    Assuming that from the first person perspective it’s indistinguishable from death then it confirms that death is not just some kind of positive non-existence. You’re not left floating in a black void. It’s not that there’s a gap in the movie that’s just a blank screen. That entire section is removed. You go from one moment to another entirely skipping what happened inbetween. From first person perspective that gap doesn’t exist. You never really went unconsciouss. You went from experiencing the drugs starting to take effect to waking up. Death is probably just like this except that there’s no jump from experience to another but experience just stops.

    The another thing about this is that maybe death doesn’t stop experience. Since you cannot experience not existing then maybe death is no different from general anesthesia; you die here and then in an instant you’re (what ever that is) transported having some other experience somewhere else in a different body or into whatever that can have experiences. Perhaps this is what people mean by rebirth.

    • kool_newt
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I like this perspective, I think I will adopt it.

      A slightly related thought. I personally find experience/perspective/consciousness itself to be of utmost absurdity. I don’t find indefinite consciousness via some method I don’t understand to be any more absurd.

      • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyzOP
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        “What is consciousness?” That is the one question I want to know the answer to the most. I’m sorry cancer patients but if I get to meet an oracle and get to ask one thing that’s what I’m going to ask.

        I don’t even so much care about how it emerges or what are the requirements needed for it to emerge. That is the “easy” problem. What I’m truly curious about is what it is. How can it be that materia gives rise to subjective experience. It’s weird! It’s something so fundamental yet if you weren’t experiencing it yourself you’d have no idea it’s even a thing. There’s zero evidence for it outside of the mind itself.

        Also as Sam Harris says it’s the only thing in the entire universe that cannot be an illusion. Even if everything else is fake and the entire universe is just a hallucination/simulation the fact that it feels like something to be in that simulation is still true.

        • kool_newt
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s weird! It’s something so fundamental yet if you weren’t experiencing it yourself you’d have no idea it’s even a thing. There’s zero evidence for it outside of the mind itself.

          Just a random thought, this reminds me of light. Kinda weird to think about but light is invisible unless it goes directly into your eyes.

          Also as Sam Harris says it’s the only thing in the entire universe that cannot be an illusion. Even if everything else is fake and the entire universe is just a hallucination/simulation the fact that it feels like something to be in that simulation is still true.

          Very very strange.

          This and time too. You ask the oracle about consciousness, I’ll ask about time lol.

          “I think therefore I am” … does that also mean “I thought therefore I was”? or something like that?

          • amelia@feddit.de
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            “I think therefore I am” … does that also mean “I thought therefore I was”? or something like that?

            No, theoretically your whole memory could be an illusion.

          • gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Now assume I’m the oracle.

            Time is the passage of the story that you are/exist in.

            In some more general sense, the universe doesn’t so much exist as a physical, real world, but as a story, dream or thought. In that story, you move forward like water flows in a river. That way you experience the passage of time. The landscape already exists, only you get to see it bit by bit. You’re welcome.

        • gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I believe that the universe is not all “materia”, but that an important part of it is pure movement, that can also take the shape of moving material. If we perceive something through our eyes, then movement (train passing by) acts on itself (the eyes), and that gives rise to the structure of the story, which is consciousness.

          • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyzOP
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            This seems to fit well with one of the explanations for what the brain actually is doing or atleast one of the processes running which is trying to guess what happens next.

            That seems plausible in my mind.

    • Vashti@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      So like am I the only one[tm] who felt like time did pass, actually, while I was under? It was like being deeply asleep.