A good NDE is a self-reported NDE

The only conclusion I’m drawing is that a resuscitation specialist—someone who resuscitates people in hospitals daily and has spent their entire career searching for NDEs—has not been able to compile his own database of 43 “spectacular” accounts to extract themes and commonalities. This suggests that such spectacular NDEs in cardiac arrest settings are exceedingly rare, likely occurring with decades between them.

While NDERF has some merits as a hypothesis-generating tool, it should not be used as a basis for firm conclusions. I was in contact with Jeffrey Long’s wife over 20 years ago when they were looking for someone to translate a Danish NDE account into English. If they allowed random internet contributors like me to add to their database, it’s inevitable that it would contain numerous errors, exaggerations, and other inaccuracies.

I think you need to think a little further.

Consciousness is by far the biggest scientific question there is. Every other science subject depends on consciousness. Even the humblest experiment - say to test Ohm's law requires someone to understand what he is testing, get the equipment together, perform the measurements of current and voltage across a resistor, and then analyse the results.

Yes, the analysis could be done on a computer, but using one only complicates the issue because the computer and all its software was invented by the human mind. Ohm himself not only had to do the experiment, but conceive of the hypothesis in the first place.

Every bit of science has been established by conscious beings.

The standard scientific theory of consciousness is (roughly) that nerve cells send pulses to each other, some of which trigger more signals and various other chemicals. How that produces consciousness is still a total mystery.

You might think that in that situation scientists would realise they were on shaky ground, and would seize on any evidence relating to the fundamental nature of consciousness - because all of science depends on it.

The difficulties that Sam Parnia has in proving beyond any scintilla of doubt (not reasonable doubt) that a person undergoing an NDE concern the question of whether a person being resuscitated can actually observe the scene around him without using his physical eyes.

This question has been to all intents and purposes answered by the fact that some people, blind from birth, have experienced NDE's in which they can see.

You blame the fact that NDERF accepts submissions using the internet. That may introduce some mistakes, but given the vital nature of this evidence, where are the funds to send out researchers to contact these people and conduct more formal interviews? I suppose you may say that the witnesses are contaminated by their use of the internet!

Let me remind you of one further fact. Ramanujan came from a poor region of India. Despite no training in advanced maths, he was able to impress Hardy with assertions that neither he nor Hardy were able to prove. Gradually others have proved that some of his assertions are in fact true theorems. He said that he received the theorems from an Indian goddess, but of course that concept is not 'scientific' and is thus ignored.

Perhaps the most amazing thing is that I am pretty sure you know all of this, but it doesn't seem to matter to you.

To all intents and purposes I think science has gone crazy.

David

Perhaps the most amazing thing is that I am pretty sure you know all of this, but it doesn't seem to matter to you.

I think he's considering all of this, I don't see @sbu as a materialist-atheist fundamentalist.

Personally NDERF has never been something I pay much attention to because AFAICTell it is just submissions on the web without verification?

T.A.S.T.E actually knows who is submitting, from what I can tell, even if they keep the scientist's name anonymous. So that one I think is more interesting.

I think it is a worthwhile hypothesis that Parnia has about the Hellish NDEs being traumatic pseudo-memories of invasive hospital procedures, but while I am not certain there are Hells - and their mention even in NDEs is questionably due to biases - I don't think it's a good idea to dismiss negative NDEs so easily.

So I do agree with some criticism of where Parnia seems to be going, [he seems to be] following his own wish for a universally wonderful afterlife.

Yet this seems to be tied to a historical trend and cultural bias, arguably as much as the visions of Hell were.

All to say the evidential aspect of NDEs is evidence for Survival, which I would divide from a proper mapping of what awaits us.

There are enough commonalities - along with pleasant meetings with the dead** - to make me hopeful that there are wonderful places waiting for us, but there also seem to be comparably boring places and possibly some downright awful ones.

** Thinking specifically of meeting people who have been dead yet unknown to the NDEr, or people they didn't know were dead.

Personally NDERF has never been something I pay much attention to because AFAICTell it is just submissions on the web without verification?

T.A.S.T.E actually knows who is submitting, from what I can tell, even if they keep the scientist's name anonymous. So that one I think is more interesting.

The very fact that these imperfect data collection schemes are necessary, frustrates me intensely. At least those running these schemes are doing their best to preserve some fascinating data about the nature of reality.

BTW, yes Sbu makes statements which seem to separate his ideas from those of simple materialists, and yet somehow, he just doesn't seem to get what you and Nbtruthman and myself get!

@sbu I think if you wrote at greater length about these issue it really might help. Quips about the quality of Sam Parnia's results don't seem close to that.

David

The very fact that these imperfect data collection schemes are necessary, frustrates me intensely. At least those running these schemes are doing their best to preserve some fascinating data about the nature of reality.

Agreed.

And I do appreciate that NDERF has value in that this is a topic a lot of people don't want to discuss openly so provides an avenue to track interest in the phenomenon.

Both the public and academia seem increasingly willing to go against religious orthodoxy, including the Materialist faith. I do feel that over time we will see greater acceptance of Survival as a scientific hypothesis worthy of funding. We saw some of that with the Bigelow prize these past years.

All to say the evidential aspect of NDEs is evidence for Survival, which I would divide from a proper mapping of what awaits us.

I don't think that is the most accurate or most useful cut, you can make on all the evidence (IMO).

There are enough commonalities - along with pleasant meetings with the dead** - to make me hopeful that there are wonderful places waiting for us, but there also seem to be comparably boring places and possibly some downright awful ones.

** Thinking specifically of meeting people who have been dead yet unknown to the NDEr, or people they didn't know were dead.

More accurately, this evidence shows that spacetime can only be an approximation, that the narrative we are taught to think about time and space is wrong. Rather, ones experience is shared; transcends spacetime; is only a result (a way of usefully understanding/interacting-with infinite amounts of information).

I don't think that is the most accurate or most useful cut, you can make on all the evidence (IMO).


More accurately, this evidence shows that spacetime can only be an approximation, that the narrative we are taught to think about time and space is wrong. Rather, ones experience is shared; transcends spacetime; is only a result (a way of usefully understanding/interacting-with infinite amounts of information).

Spacetime as we know it only has meaning at the physical level ~ the mind isn't limited, because it isn't physical, so it can travel very astronomical distances in merest moments, if the location is known... or even not, if there is just a desire to explore the unknown, I guess? I only know because I accidentally telepathically connected to and communicated with a woman on some other planet, perceiving her surroundings through her senses, and when she focused, she through mine. Very interesting experience ~ the time it took was apparently about being able to properly focus the mind on the location, not distance of space.

At an astral level, there seems to be some... vague sense of "spacetime", but it's rather different. Space is... semi-subjective, while time... almost seems to flow at a similarish rate, though I am entirely uncertain what that means when astral form and space is much less defined than our physical form and space, which is somewhat defined by the laws of physical flow and change.