Your experience is not the same for everyone. Mine was quite different. I was surrounded by peace and love. I had a group of beings surrounding me with a love and joy that I had never experienced on Earth. I just wanted to go with them. It was a euphoria that I can’t even describe. I heard people in the room say my name several times, but I just wanted to go go go. They kept trying to pull me back and I just kept trying to stay unconscious. When they finally woke me up, I was so very disappointed.

I really think that you were in hell. Hell is the absence of love. In my opinion the only way to “heaven” or the plane where the love is, is through Jesus. BUT there may be lots of other ways. I’m not saying that I have all the answers because obviously none of us really know much of anything. I think you might find some peace in some sort of religion. Do some research on different philosophies, if you haven’t already.

After I left religion, I completely stopped thinking of my decisions (and how they relate to my lofty goals vs primal drives) in terms of "temptation". It almost feels like a foreign concept to me anymore.

I think about why I'm making a choice, what effect it has, who it might harm/help, and whether it will make me happy. It comes much more naturally, and decisions don't feel like a struggle.

Trying to suppress thoughts or feelings is fruitless, because errant thoughts and desires that run counter to our goals are natural products of any human brain.

Instead, take them as valuable input, and then make your decision. Will you obey the errant thought, or will you proceed with your goal in spite of it? It doesn't matter either way, as long as you're happy with the outcome.

I have a different take on it. He said what he thinks and explains his reasoning. Nothing absolute about that.

It’s actually statistical zero.

I think that’s my point precisely actually — hence why the above poster is mistaken in viewing his opinion as the absolute truth regarding consciousness.

There’s all kind of a double negative question, but there are people who don’t ask the question what is the meaning of life. Tons

Sure, but there aren’t beings pondering consciousness on the uninhabitable planets. It’s the law of large numbers. So far life’s success rate is something like 0.000000000001%.

Intellectually this all tracks, but the emotional reactio to coming out of the oblivion of anaesthesia, and knowing I never wanted to go back to that oblivionz and how sweet life is, still haunts me. I still have nightmares about dying. The irony is, in my nightmares, I'm panicked because I'm about to die and lose consciousness, but I'm not even really conscious in the dream state. I'm unconsciously repeating my conscious dread.

ADHD?

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I think it general it’s hard to be dogmatic as humans and we’re often pulled in different directions by emotion, sickness, lust, etc. Even holy texts can be self-contradicting and engender different interpretations

Sure. I guess in this case “avoidance” would be scheduling your shift after your urgent work is due.

Right. "Logic" is just a totally subjective self feedback loop, essentially reducible to unprovable assumptions. Nothing more.

I actually think the fact that it just ends isn’t that bad. Like you said until you gained the consciousness and knowledge to contemplate your being, there was nothing.

Somehow you came to consciousness and as yourself. Not one of the other billions of people on this rock that has that same insane ability. Knowing how lucky we are to have it in the first place makes me ok knowing it’ll end. It’s sad it will but it would be sadder to waste it always thinking about it ending. Sadder still to not realise how lucky you are to have it in the first place, which you obviously do.

The anaesthesia does sound really weird though.

jung wrote a lot about this

I'm not sure what logic has to do with the reality we have. I get that people would use logic to try and understand the universe. But with obvious gaps in our knowledge and understanding. It makes sense that we can't make perfect sense of it.

Plus with reality operating under it's own laws and properties. It's possible we'll never be able to make logical sense of the universe.

Logic is also not absolute. And is fallible.

This makes a lot of sense. In the Catholic philosophical tradition, intellectual activity is understood to be a discursive / categorical type of activity. One seeks to understand the world by breaking it up and putting it together in a logical sort. In fact, it’s also supposed to be extremely joyful activity, like reassembling a puzzle.

Aquinas was a statistically sensitive person. He didn’t see moral behavior as a matter of sheer will, but of mere probability. Based on my past experience and understand of reality, what is the probability that I will be tempted to steal if I am alone in a room with unguarded money? Higher than if I never enter the room.

It may sound “weak” to avoid temptation, but we don’t think that way about other dangers. You’re not “weak” for keeping fire far from gasoline. You’re not “weak” for diversifying investments to decrease risk. You’re smart! The wise people are those who can read the signs of trouble and get out before there’s a chance to fall down.

Ok what did I miss?

The article proves the use of Occam's Razor for truth in the general case: when picking between unfalsified models where one has a subset of the other's parameters. It's a short set theoretic argument

In non-local consciousness theory the brain is a receiver. So without the brain the body would not be able to function any better than a radio with no signal.

Why wouldn't the same consciousness apply to our ancestors, or dogs, or lizards or anything else? Why is the only conscious experience you can conceive that of modern humans? Several different species have shown all kinds of conscious indicators.

But he hung out with Uri Geller! And Uri could bend spoons with his mind! Sad to hear that in a search for answers he fell in with Uri and his scam.

We don't know why things are, and mostly only understand how they are. Aswell as how to make them work in specific ways. Wouldn't be surprised to find out there's much more going on than we perceive. Like here we are trying to measure existence with a tape measure- wrong tool for the job.

This is the second time today I’ve seen someone use that word on Reddit. I feel like it’s going to be the new cool word to use for 2 weeks

How does this apply to any of our ancestors? Beyond some more intelligent and prosocial birds, and prosocial mammals, what possible context could there be to this for most animals? What does this mean for matter which has not been consumed by self replicating carbon chains?

I have not expressed disdain for anything. I'm trying to understand the context of such a mechanism outside of highly developed pro-social animal behavior. And why does the brain even exist, if it can apparently function without itself?

Are you suggesting all our inventions, which work, as far as we know, specifically because they were designed to work based upon our robust empirical knowledge of the physical reality upon which they work, are actually working by coincidence?

For example, genetic engineering doesn't work because our incredible, and entirely unfalsified library of empirical knowledge of chemistry and biology allows us to precisely manipulate genes to produce expected proteins, and expected results, but because by sheer coincidence all these observations happen to be entirely consistent with a completely different system, and all of our direct observations, include electron microscopy, are erroneous, while, again, being, by a coincidence in the order of quintillions to one, entirely consistent with actual reality?

Things we do not yet know about reality cannot negate what we do already know, and testably and consistently works. No matter what we learn about quantumn physics, time, space, etc, will stop chemistry from working the way we know it works. No discovery will magically change the structure or function of proteins, or the structures they form.