I absolutely reject the idea that you should take something as true without true evidence just because it’s too difficult to get that evidence.

So do I.

This idea came from a couple case studies where a heart transplant recipient would seem to gain memories or personality traits from the donor. These cases sounded a lot like the typical “paranormal knowledge” story. Two particular cases were someone liking a food they didn’t like before but the donor did, and a child avoiding a toy that donor had with them when they died.

Being able to accurately describe the location of objects (in or outside the room) or describe specialized medical equipment, the appearance of the doctors in the room (even if the patient hadn’t met them before or after), and so on. This is all very strange stuff. To have hallucinated this stuff perfectly would be remarkable. Forget about being dead, some of these stories would be impressive even if the patient just had their eyes closed (or, in some cases, even if their eyes were wide open). In comparison, someone changing their toy or food preferences to more closely align with those of a particular stranger is, really, not that shocking. So I don’t think this is a fair comparison at all.

Again, we are running into the same issues we had before regarding your statistical noise hypothesis. We don’t know how many NDEs occur, or what percentage of them are reported to have components that require supernatural explanations. So to assert that it’s all just statistical noise is to assume, without any data, that these numbers are going to match what you’re looking for. Despite our data being constrained here, I actually think the absence of certain kinds of data counts strongly against the statistical noise hypothesis.

Because, if the statistical noise hypothesis were correct, it would be extremely common for patients to hallucinate what was going on in the hospital room inaccurately. But all the reports I get are of one of two categories:

• [1] reports of visiting another realm (these are the most common types of cases) or
• [2] reports of staying in the hospital and observing what is going on with surprising accuracy (these are the most interesting cases).

But I am not aware of even a single report of a third category of case,

• [3] reports of staying in the hospital and observing what is going wrong with total inaccuracy.

And I get that cases in the third category would be less likely to be reported on because those cases are less interesting. I see that concern. But we have to appreciate how, given your hypothesis, just how thoroughly these inaccurate accounts would dwarf all these seemingly supernatural ones. Cases in the third category would outnumber cases in the first category by the thousands at least (realistically, it would be more like the millions, due to the sheer level of detail in some cases in the first category, and just how unlikely it would be to hallucinate that detail accurately). If it really were the case that cases in the first category were so common then I would expect at minimum at least one or two of these inaccurate hallucinations to be reported in the medical literature. But I am not aware of a single case like this (is there really not one doctor that would write in their notes, “patient reported this and that occurred in the operating room, but he was wrong”?). So I have a challenge for you: can you identify even a single case that matches the description in (3)? After all, if you’re right, then these types of cases would be extremely plentiful so even if only 0.01% of these cases in the third category are reported on, it should still be fairly easy for you to identify at least one.

So, to sum it up, you’re making a number of assumptions here. The first assumption is that these NDE cases are banal enough that they could be ‘statistical noise’ (which, I think, is demonstrable false; these are not cases where someone changes their food preferences, they are cases where someone has detailed information that they should not have). Then you are assuming that there are an extraordinarily large number of NDE cases where people inaccurately report on what is going on in the hospital when they are going through an NDE (though this second assumption isn’t demonstrably false, it is at least extremely suspect since there doesn’t seem to be any cases like this reported in the medical literature, despite the extreme frequency of their occurrence). So your statistical noise hypothesis relies on these two assumptions, and both of them seem to collapse under scrutiny.

On top of that there are other things going on, too, such as preterminal lucidity, that also point to the possibility that we ‘survive’ our death. If you recall from my earlier comments, I was using NDE as an example from a particular book (Surviving Death by Leslie Kane). I chose NDEs because they are an example that is familiar to a lot of people. But it was only one chapter from the book, and it was one of the least interesting chapters. I’m not saying this because I think this book is the ultimate source of truth on this topic, I’m just saying that there is more than just NDEs to suggest that death is not the end. Unfortunately this stuff is so thoroughly stigmatized that people can’t even bring themselves to look at this data. But any honest person that did would realize, at the very least, that this stigma is unwarranted.

Deflect is also a good alternative. It’s based in Montreal, Quebec. It’s what a lot of Canadian instances in the fediverse are moving too (see here).

The strongest evidence is the fact that modern equipment can see the actual tracks the A11 astronauts left while hiking and driving on the moon.

The problem with this is that if you’re someone who thinks the moon landing is fake then you’re simply just going to dismiss this as yet another example of NASA propaganda. Because though those tracks are there, no one can actually see it for themselves (unless you happen to have a really high powered telescope, which is unlikely). The moon dust thing though, that’s something you can reason through and examine for yourself

I think the most convincing evidence that we did go to the moon has to do with the dynamics of the moon dust in the original Apollo footage. If you look at the footage you’ll see the dust gets kicked up pretty high, higher than what you’d expect given Earth’s gravity, and it falls at a slower rate too.

So the question is: if they faked this footage then how did they get the dust to behave like this?

One possible explanation is that the footage was filmed underwater. The issue with this, though, is this is not at all how you’d expect dust to behave underwater. (you can go to the beach, kick up a bunch of sand underneath the water and see for yourself).

Another possibility is suspension cables. I guess you could explain the astronauts perceived lower gravity with suspension cables, but for pieces of dust? You can’t have suspension cables for individual pieces of dust.

So the simplest explanation is that this footage really was actually taken on a lower gravity environment, such as the moon.

Yeah. I bought my kaptop second hand. When it still had windows on it, it was basically usuable because jt was so laggy. I installed linux and, badda bing badda boom, works like a charm. Its been my main computer for a fee years now

You guys don’t learn geometry either?

The same way you would on with else. You collect data, try to construct theories, test your hypothesis, etc.

Also, I was just using ‘supernatural’ as a shorthand here. If these phenomena are real then they would be part of nature and therefore natural

I think I’m the guy you’re referring to. I don’t think the scientific method is flawed.

This was a lot of fun to read, thanks for sharing

A “case study” is more formal than an anecdote, but still has the same issues.

Okay. The distinction doesn’t seem very important to you, so there’s no use for me to waste time quibbling about it here

Case studies are used to guide experimental and quantitative research, but are not a replacement for that part of the research process.

Applying that to case studies that appear to involve the supernatural, sufficient convincing case studies should lead to theories about the conditions for supernatural events, which should lead to experiments or quantitative studies to test those theories.

I agree completely. But there are instances in medicine/psychology where it is genuinely difficult, for practical reasons, to carry out large scale studies (though of course we should still try, to best of your ability). I believe NDEs are in this camp (see this comment here I made about difficulties in performing a study like the one you described in your last comment).

Now, before you completely dismiss NDEs for this, consider other issues with similar practical hurdles to their study. I think the short term results of corpus callosotomy (ie split brain surgery) is a good example here. This is a surgery where you basically severe a large number of connections between the brain’s right and left hemispheres; it used to be a treatment for epilepsy. This surgery is very interesting because it causes the two halves of the brain to basically act independently of one another, which lead to comical scenarios (such as fights breaking out between the right and left hand, for example). However these effects are most pronounced in the months immediately following the surgery. With time the two hemispheres learn compensate and forge new connections, allowing greater cooperation between them (though, granted, they will never return to the level of cooperation they had before).

It’s hard to construct a study on the immediate effects of these surgeries, for a few reason. For one, they are almost never performed anymore, and when they were performed they weren’t performed frequently enough: at any given time, the sample size of people who just had that surgery in the last few months is probably 0, and the highest its ever gotten is probably around 2 or 3. That’s hardly enough to base a study off of. And even if we were to base a study off of that, there are further issues. For one, how do you create an adequate control group (one that accounts for placebo or exaggeration)? Do we pretend to perform this surgery on some people when we actually didn’t? That seems tricky. Leaving fake surgical scars would not pass the ethics review. It would also never pass the ethics board to perform this surgery on people who don’t need it (ie people without epilepsy) but that would be the only way to control for that potentially confounding variable.

Despite these challenges, the case studies we have here are pretty illuminating. They seem to provide us with a genuine understanding of what the near term effects of these surgeries actually are. This is not generally considered to be controversial.

I’m sure you can see the comparison I’m driving at here. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Hi. Thanks for your comment. I responded to it here.

Hi sorry I saw your other comment and thought it was very interesting. I took a while to reply because I think an experiment was attempted once (I remember learning about the attempt in a university class) and I wanted to find more info about that to send here. But I couldn’t find anything with a superficial search so I was hoping to eventually find the time to do a bit a deep dive and dig it up.

From what I remember the experiment ran into serious issues with the sample size. It started out with a very large number of participants, but they got filtered out precipitously at several points along the way. To begin with, the researchers couldn’t predict who among the participants was going to eventually flatline. Of the handful of participants who did, the research team couldn’t always control or predict where and when they died, so they couldn’t always set the room up accordingly. And of the participants who did flatline in a somewhat predictable manner, the majority of them just died for good and did not come back to tell the tale. Of the remaining participants, some were further prevented from continuing with the study on the order of their physician, because they were in such bad shape (they did literally just die, after all) that even just being interviewed by the researchers would have been too much. This left the researchers with very few participants to work with.

I remember there also being criticisms about the experimental set-up, specifically regarding information the participants were quizzed on afterwards. I think the way the experimenters set it up there was a colourful sheet or something on a shelf above their body. This sheet was only visible from the ceiling looking down, so the idea was that if the participants reported its colour correctly then we could verify their claims of leaving their body and looking down at the room. The critique of this though was that, if you literally just died, you’re going to be paying attention to details that are relevant to you, such as what the doctors are doing to your body or how your family is taking the situation. You probably don’t even think that you’re going to come back (and in most cases, you’d be right) and you definitely wouldn’t have the mental wherewithal to scan the room for mundane details so they could accurately report it back to the researchers after you’re resuscitated.

I think the way you described things is actually a better setup though, for this reason. We should just give a multiple choice quiz about events that happened in the room when the patient flatline, specifically details that would be relevant / emotionally salient to the patient. This setup would also have the added benefit of meaning that the researchers would not need to setup the room ahead of time, which could play a modest role in mitigating some of the same size issues. Unfortunately this would mean that this information would change from patient to patient, so it can’t be as standardized as we might want it to be. But that’s just the price we’d have to pay to get a study like this off the ground to begin with.

Despite all these issues though I think studies like this should definitely be conducted, especially with the multiple choice structure you suggested because that seems more practical. The sample size issues are a real obstacle though, and to overcome it we would need to start with a truly large cohort of participants so that we could still have a workable sample by the end of it all. And studies of that scale require funding! Unfortunately, due to the social stigma around this topic (as evidenced by the vitriol being flung my way on this thread) this is a chronically underfunded area of research. But let’s hope that changes! Because studies like the one you described are too interesting for us not to conduct.

How do you distinguish between an anecdote snd a case study?

That‘S not what Galileo did. Newton is the one who eventually came up with the new laws is physics that explained Galileo’s findings.

Honestly verifying the buyers age at the store is probably more private embedding age verification into the OS itself

If your book could logically prove something, or at least argue convincingly (logically!) in favor of it, maybe it would in fact be interesting. Then you could repeat the arguments here

…

You would have to present an absolutely powerful, convincing logical argument

You seem to be mistaking a logical arguments for an empirical argument (you don’t “prove” things in science the same way you prove things in math or logic). I’m making an empirical argument, not a logical argument. But in order for an empirical argument to be convincing you need to actually look at the data. This seems to be something that you’re very adverse to doing. You don’t want to read the book. You don’t want to review its bibliography. And you turned down my offer for me to literally send you sources here in this chat for us to discuss. So I really don’t know how else I can help you at this point. If you’re really so sure that you can prove (logically?) that this data is not worth looking at then there is really nothing further for us to talk about.

And I’m sorry to say but this very much reminds me of conspiracy theories, e.g. flat earth theory,

Who’s the one literally refusing to look at the data here? Me or you?

Anecdotes are, scientifically speaking, basically worthless

My patience with you here is running thin. I offering to send you peer-reviewed research and now you’re dismissing it all wholesale as just anecdotes? Note that (a) this is simply false and (b) case studies are an important part of all research in psychology and medicine (which are the subject matters we are dealing with here). I don’t have the patience to get into the weeds on this with you, so if you’re actually interested and not just trying to save face then please refer to this comment I made here.

Please do not respond to this message unless you have something actually intelligent to contribute to the conversation.

Okay thanks for clarifying. I see what you’re saying. I think your stance is basically this: a broken clock is right at least twice a day, so sometimes people might make correct guesses about what happened when they were flatlining, but that’s to be expected. (Please correct me if this is a mischaracterization.)

I’d say, yes, a broken clock is right sometimes, but not very often. You seem to agree with this so you’re trying to show that the total numbers of potentially paranormal NDEs is a small fraction of the total number of NDEs. But I’m very weary of this. Because the way we’re going about it here is very unstructured. Because we don’t know how many NDEs there are total, how many seem potentially supernatural, how many seem mundane, the ratio between them, etc. If we want to crunch the numbers then we would need to look at a particular study, otherwise I don’t think there’s any use. It would all just be guesswork.

My hypothesis to explain that “supernatural” knowledge:

1. Sometimes people notice things subconsciously, and sometimes other people could have been tipped off about information in ways other people don’t realize.

You seem to be concerned, here, that people who come back from an NDE may misattribute the source of their information. They may get information from a mundane source then effectively launder it, misattributing it to a supernatural source. (For example a person that is mistakenly labeled as brain-dead might actually only be comatose. This would allow them to hear conversations in the room and recount what happened afterwards. This seems spooky but nothing out of the ordinary is going on here.) This is a perfectly legitimate concern. And it’s a valid hypothesis. We can call it the information laundering hypothesis.

But let me ask you: what would it take for this hypothesis to be disproved? Could you conceive of some scenario where you’d be satisfied that there truly was no physical means for the NDE patient to have accessed that information? For example, what if the patient knew what was going on in another room that was out of earshot? And what if the patient was the only person in Room A who knew what was going on in Room B (so no one could have tipped them off)? Or what if the patient knew about what object(s) were placed in some inaccessible area, even though practically speaking no one could have known this unless they had a unique vantage point? Can you conceive of any scenarios like this that would more-or-less disqualify the information laundering hypothesis?

I’m not sure if I agree with the way you’ve characterized the logical structure here. Me and the person I’m talking to both seem to agree that there that at least superficially seem to be supernatural (so I am not ‘affirming’ anything here). We are simply disagreeing on the relevance of these cases or how seriously we should take them.

Okie dokie

surrounded by people who are willing to believe in nonsense

Not really lol. Read this post. This post was literally made because my friend and I were disagreeing on this topic. So if my friend was willing to believe in ‘nonesense’ why would he post?

You are a fool.

I won’t call you a fool but you’re definitely a grumpy little fella. Try taking a nap and having a nice warm bowl of soup. Maybe put the phone down for a bit and go outside. Don’t worry we all have our ups and downs, you’ll feel better eventually.