quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata

quote:

ORIGINAL: Hippiekinkster

http://dailygrail.com/Interviews/2004/4/Dr-Rick-Strassman-Conversation-DMT

Yep, and here's one for you...

Johns Hopkins study finds Psilocybin dosage 'sweet spot' for positive and lasting effect

K.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata
And those aside, despite the National Geographic headline consider the following from the article body:

The one difficulty in arguing that CO2 is the cause is that in cardiac arrests, everybody has high CO2 but only 10 percent have NDEs,"

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata

said neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick of the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London. What's more, in heart attack patients, Fenwick said, "there is no coherent cerebral activity which could support consciousness, let alone an experience with the clarity of an NDE."

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen

Do you even know what string theory is?

I know English. You should learn it. We use it a lot around here.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata


I would like to ask you nicely to observe a certain convention in responding to posts, namely, that what someone says is what they said. Not what they didn't say, not what you hallucinated, and not what your supernatural powers told you the words "really" meant.

Will you try to work on that? Thank you.

K.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata

quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen

That's why I cautioned against reading press releases if you do not know the subject well enough to spot the hype inserted by the author.

String theory has long been criticized for being a interesting pastime, but not much beyond that because of its failure to produce any testable falsifiable predictions. The only claim that I see being made here is that string theory does in fact appear to make falsifiable predictions about quantum entanglement that can be tested in the laboratory.

quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen

However this will have no bearing on whether string theory accurately models the 4 fundamental forces nor will it shed light on whether electrons and quarks are strings or not which is what string theory is about.

Well, granted. And in all fairness, I'll allow that a "test of string theory" might be construed in broader terms than the body of the article supports. But in equal fairness, the article did take pains to correct any such impression. However, given your view that string theory predicts nothing and not ever likely to, I gather you think the applicability of the math here is just a coincidence?

K.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

quote:

ORIGINAL: lickenforyou

I’m saying that there is the possibility that there is undetected brain activity. Not definitely, but maybe.

I don't see why you think this would make any difference. One of the reasons many people are convinced that consciousness is simply brain activity is that we have established so many correlates between experience and the brain. We can tell, for example, whether someone is conscious, dreaming, in a dreamless sleep, or totally unconscious. And none of these states is consistent with an absence of detectable brain activity, even if we grant the possibility that such may exist.

K.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

quote:

ORIGINAL: lickenforyou

However, it is plausible that unconscious people can still register sensory cues and prior knowledge and incorporate them into their NDE.

I just want to point out, yet again, that in the cases that impress me we're not just talking about people who are simply unconscious. There is still plenty of detectable electrical activity going on even in the brain of an unconscious person. We're talking about no detectable brain activity. Zip. The "consciousness-server" is down. If the brain is still somehow supporting consciousness, then all our hard-won knowledge about the brain and conscious experience is wrong. Because something's gotta give, one way or the other. And I think our research is pretty solid in that respect.

K.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata


Your attitude toward this issue has ranged from the absurd ("Dig a corpse up after six months and he tells the same story, then I'll believe it") to the point where now you're even willing to toss away decades of neurological science if that's what it takes to avoid having to credit the existence of a known phenomenon.

Tell ya what... have it your way.

K.

quote:

ORIGINAL: DeviantlyD

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23768436/ns/dateline_nbc-newsmakers/t/dead-man-recovering-after-atv-accident/

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/11/husband-celebrates-miracle-brain-dead-wife-wakes-hospital/

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113681104

quote:

ORIGINAL: DeviantlyD

I was just supporting your commentary in the sense that what is currently defined as "brain dead" isn't always the case and that much more about the brain has yet to be discovered. I saw an interesting documentary years ago, produced by the BBC. It was about three individuals of average or above average intelligence who had virtually no brain matter. According to various scans, they had a layer of brain tissue and a mass of cerebral fluid, but that was it. I wish I could recall more details.

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ORIGINAL: lickenforyou

"individuals of average or above average intelligence who had virtually no brain matter"

That's weird, I know several people who are just the opposite.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: rawtape
I think Descartes was wrong too regarding "Cogito ergo sum," but for me the error lies in his trying to sneak in a bunch of premises that he never explicitly articulates.

When people try to unpack cogito ergo sum they frequently manage to pull more things out of the bag than it contains. Descartes arrived at his famous formulation by engaging in an exercise of hyperbolic doubt, casting aside everything he possibly could until he found that there was one thing he was unable to doubt, namely, that he was an experiencing being.