Debate: That veridical NDEs are a myth [split: A splendid video about evolution]

I wouldn't say that's a hit and it goes to show how much further our research methods have come over time when it comes to reducing potential sensory leakage and other related ways of compromising accounts. The fact that he didn't mention noticing anything in his first interview is very standout and is consistent with the other NDEs in her study where people were high enough to see the monitor but weren't concerned enough to pay attention to it. Sartori's line of questioning itself is very leading and the fact that he only brings up noticing something after she does so means I definitely wouldn't count that as any kind of accurate perception.

To push back on that last point somewhat, I would say that a hidden target, whatever it is, is probably not the first, second, or third thing someone who has an NDE is likely to focus on when recounting their experience; they might need some prompting to recall or bring up a comparatively trivial detail about the room.

To push back on that last point somewhat, I would say that a hidden target, whatever it is, is probably not the first, second, or third thing someone who has an NDE is likely to focus on when recounting their experience; they might need some prompting to recall or bring up a comparatively trivial detail about the room.

That 'prompting' is bad science however. If it were to be used, much more strict wordage would be more appropriate in order to not lead patient's potential answers, she specifcially asks him if he saw any coloured paper on top of the monitor which is CRAZY and pretty much instantly removes it from any real consideration for any scientist who's looking at the data. Luckily these issues have been rectified in more recent research like the AWARE studies, but it goes to show how we can't exclusively rely on the classical papers about NDEs to be air-tight in their methedology and results.

That 'prompting' is bad science however. If it were to be used, much more strict wordage would be more appropriate in order to not lead patient's potential answers, she specifcially asks him if he saw any coloured paper on top of the monitor which is CRAZY and pretty much instantly removes it from any real consideration for any scientist who's looking at the data. Luckily these issues have been rectified in more recent research like the AWARE studies, but it goes to show how we can't exclusively rely on the classical papers about NDEs to be air-tight in their methedology and results.

I ask politely, how does an unconscious person "see" without using their eyes.  We do know that people "see" when dreaming, when remembering and when having reported visions.  So it occurs, but is not like vision through the eyes.  Every person has the ability to understand and visualize outside of signals from the eyes.  This is the experience of detection, with the mind's eye, important probabilities in their life. 

TV and movies uses recording of actual physical events as a signal.  The general public thinks that the tv version is what happens, when it is just metaphor.  Eyes see signals.  Minds are not capable of seeing signals.  Its is not magic.  The physicalization of Psi is a road to nowhere.  It is not physical, but it comes from the informational environment around us all.  I hope here in the Psi community this can be seen as common sense.  There are members here who report visions.  Visions don't look like eyesight, as the meanings are what is understood.  A reading of Wilson Van Dusen might help those with clinical backgrounds.

 A Journey into the Hidden Realms of Psychology and Spirituality
By Wilson Van Dusen
Foreword by Dr. Raymond Moody
Afterword by Dr. James Lawrence

 https://swedenborg.com/product/the-prese...er-worlds/

The mind "sees" through the direct perception of our capability to understand.  We can gain information from our understanding capabilities through memory, descriptions of others and our imagination creating a mental image.  People cannot see light (import data and send it through the channel of the optic nerve with their inner senses.  Minds might be able to decode optic nerve signals, as a brain in a vat.  BUT the idea that people having visions as a spirit are seeing reflected light - is nonsense.  (in the way Ray Moody describes). 
 
sbu doesn't seem to be able to look past this silliness, but I hope he responds.

I ask politely, how does an unconscious person "see" without using their eyes.  We do know that people "see" when dreaming, when remembering and when having reported visions.  So it occurs, but is not like vision through the eyes.  Every person has the ability to understand and visualize outside of signals from the eyes.  This is the experience of detection, with the mind's eye, important probabilities in their life. 

The problem is that you have to remember: brains are incredibly powerful things. Psycadelic trips, trauama responses, mental episodes, the brain has the ability to fabricate and piece together incredible stories out of snippits of information without us even having to be consciouslly aware that it's happening. That's why when these studies are performed whether it be NDEs, PSI or Mediumship it's so important to control for sensory leakage or potential leading questions, ANY bit of information that we let slip through can compromise the report. 

If I was doing a study on people going on bushwalks and seeing frogs, I would need to be very particular about my choice of words when asking if people saw frogs. If I went "did you see anything green and jumpy", even if someone didn't see a frog, their brain could piece together glances, things seen out of the corner of the eye and the person might go "actually yeah I think I did see a frog" even though in reality they didn't. The fact that this patient in Sartori's study said they didn't see anything in their first report (again like the other people who were asked, they were paying attention to other things), but when she subtly pushed them by asking about the heart monitor, asking about coloured paper, they DID see something shows that she influenced the end result without even realizing. 

It's not about mind's eyes, it's not about unconscious people seeing without using eyes, it's about good science and if we want to sit on our high horses about the quality of veridicial NDEs we need to be able to say we have the most airtight, controlled environments and our results can't be getting influenced in these ways.

The problem is that you have to remember: brains are incredibly powerful things. Psycadelic trips, trauama responses, mental episodes, the brain has the ability to fabricate and piece together incredible stories out of snippits of information without us even having to be consciouslly aware that it's happening. That's why when these studies are performed whether it be NDEs, PSI or Mediumship it's so important to control for sensory leakage or potential leading questions, ANY bit of information that we let slip through can compromise the report. 

The brain is not nearly as powerful as Materialism wants it to be ~ the mind is what is the powerful entity here, and while it may have great capacities for imagination, it can't do just anything with anything. Pre-existing mental patterns will shape how we interpret new information, whether we agree with or totally dismiss.

There are very few stories of people just making up grand bits of nonsense out of nowhere with just a handful of information ~ this is reserved for people with strong psychosis, and other disorders where there is a strong disconnect from reality. Just because something is theoretically possible does not mean that it happens very much in practice.

The real reason studies into the paranormal need to be airtight is because of the strong Materialist biases in science, where they raise the bar so high because they already believe the paranormal to be tricks of the brain, so they will never accept it.

NDEs are not so influenced by suggestion as believed, as the NDEr will compare against their memories of the experience. Psychic phenomena can be very tricky to deal with, as they require very specific frames of mind for the psychic to perform. It's why the decline effect unfortunately happens ~ less enthusiasm over doing the same experiments will dull the effect. Emotions are very psychic things, in some sense ~ they can colour the mindset in very subtle ways. Same with beliefs about something.

Mediumship simply requires minimal information, and leaving the medium to their devices. Some mediums need a certain bits of information to work with ~ or know what to ask for, if one's queries are unclear. Different mediums have different skillsets. It's complicated, like all psychic abilities.

If I was doing a study on people going on bushwalks and seeing frogs, I would need to be very particular about my choice of words when asking if people saw frogs. If I went "did you see anything green and jumpy", even if someone didn't see a frog, their brain could piece together glances, things seen out of the corner of the eye and the person might go "actually yeah I think I did see a frog" even though in reality they didn't.

This is not how most people's minds work ~ they don't just fabricate out of nowhere. Most might go "maybe", some might go "wasn't paying attention". Because some can witness something, and because they're not paying attention, they might not remember at all. Like if you're listening to someone ramble, and you later remember none of it, because your mind was occupied elsewhere.

The fact that this patient in Sartori's study said they didn't see anything in their first report (again like the other people who were asked, they were paying attention to other things), but when she subtly pushed them by asking about the heart monitor, asking about coloured paper, they DID see something shows that she influenced the end result without even realizing. 

I think you might be reading a bit much into this. Some people just need prompting for their mind to recall information ~ not all information from prompting is "fake". Sometimes, memories deemed not important by the psyche get less focus, and prompting tells the psyche, oh, hey, maybe this is important?

Memory fabrication isn't nearly as common as Materialists want it to be ~ proper hypnotic can create this danger more readily, though.

It's not about mind's eyes, it's not about unconscious people seeing without using eyes, it's about good science and if we want to sit on our high horses about the quality of veridicial NDEs we need to be able to say we have the most airtight, controlled environments and our results can't be getting influenced in these ways.

Again, this is only needed because Materialism constantly dismisses, attacks, ridicules, necessitating extremely rigorous protocols ~ and even then, it turns out that Materialists aren't happy with that, either. They just want to keep moving the goalposts and raising those bars to the point of impossibility.

Meanwhile, Materialist rhetoric never gets challenged ~ it just gets blindly accepted.

The brain is not nearly as powerful as Materialism wants it to be ~ the mind is what is the powerful entity here, and while it may have great capacities for imagination, it can't do just anything with anything. Pre-existing mental patterns will shape how we interpret new information, whether we agree with or totally dismiss.

There are very few stories of people just making up grand bits of nonsense out of nowhere with just a handful of information ~ this is reserved for people with strong psychosis, and other disorders where there is a strong disconnect from reality. Just because something is theoretically possible does not mean that it happens very much in practice.

I am not using this as a grand speele against NDEs or anything else on the whole. The simple fact is that brains can piece together stories from snippits of information in day to day life, it happens all the time, it's well documented, they don't have to be grand stories they can as simple as thinking you got up and did something when you didnt or as exciting as someone having a psychotic break and thinking they're fighting aliens. 

The reason why studies into the paranormal need to be airtight is because otherwise they're shit science. It doesn't just go one way, how many posts have we seen from NDE researchers responding to unfounded takes, opinions and info from other researchers in the same field. It's just part of doing good science, there's nothing else to it. 

I'm not saying that NDEs are open to suggestion, I'm saying that if you're in a situation where someone is asking you questions and they're asking you if you remembered a specific thing, you might second guess yourself and go maybe I do remember it? Yes some people might need some prompting to remember something, but in a study examining the validity of veridical perceptions you have to be SO INCREDIBLY CAREFUL about the words that are used so you don't give anything away to the person you're asking. If it's a study about viewing hidden targets, you CANNOT ask someone if they saw a specific coloured note on a specific piece of equipment if they weren't supposed to know about them beforehand. You've just given the entire game away and any response from then on is suspect. 

And again, it's not because of any kind of materalistist rhetoric or anything. If studies like Sartori's were the ONLY ones we had, there would not be any scientific reason to firmly believe in the validity of veridical perception because of flaws like these. Luckily they aren't, we have much better ones in the current day that have been performed, but that doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to the mistakes of the past just because it's convenient for us. It's got nothing to do with materialism or people who believe in it, this is the standard that we should set for ourselves and the evidence that we view as legitimate and worthwhile.

I ask politely, how does an unconscious person "see" without using their eyes.  We do know that people "see" when dreaming, when remembering and when having reported visions.  So it occurs, but is not like vision through the eyes.  Every person has the ability to understand and visualize outside of signals from the eyes.  This is the experience of detection, with the mind's eye, important probabilities in their life. 

TV and movies uses recording of actual physical events as a signal.  The general public thinks that the tv version is what happens, when it is just metaphor.  Eyes see signals.  Minds are not capable of seeing signals.  Its is not magic.  The physicalization of Psi is a road to nowhere.  It is not physical, but it comes from the informational environment around us all.  I hope here in the Psi community this can be seen as common sense.  There are members here who report visions.  Visions don't look like eyesight, as the meanings are what is understood.  A reading of Wilson Van Dusen might help those with clinical backgrounds.
 https://swedenborg.com/product/the-prese...er-worlds/

The mind "sees" through the direct perception of our capability to understand.  We can gain information from our understanding capabilities through memory, descriptions of others and our imagination creating a mental image.  People cannot see light (import data and send it through the channel of the optic nerve with their inner senses.  Minds might be able to decode optic nerve signals, as a brain in a vat.  BUT the idea that people having visions as a spirit are seeing reflected light - is nonsense.  (in the way Ray Moody describes). 
 
sbu doesn't seem to be able to look past this silliness, but I hope he responds.

Stephen, I think you're misunderstanding my criticism of the overhyped conclusions some communities draw from NDE phenomena. I'm not saying there's some mundane explanation based on known physical laws behind all of this. And I certainly don't believe 'we know everything' or that 'consciousness is just an illusion.' Look, we don't understand the mind at all, we can't even explain how electromagnetic radiation hitting our eyes becomes the inner visual experience we have, let alone what creates our subjective thoughts.
Could psi and veridical perception during out-of-body experiences be real? Sure, obviously, we don't have answers to everything. Do I personally believe it's real? No, sadly I don't. What I've seen is that when methodology improves, these phenomena tend to fade away. I'll admit anomalies happen, and they're important clues about things we don't understand yet. But this popular idea that cardiac arrest patients commonly wake up and give precise reports of what they 'saw' while unconscious? That just doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

The problem is that you have to remember: brains are incredibly powerful things. Psycadelic trips, trauama responses, mental episodes, the brain has the ability to fabricate and piece together incredible stories out of snippits of information without us even having to be consciouslly aware that it's happening. That's why when these studies are performed whether it be NDEs, PSI or Mediumship it's so important to control for sensory leakage or potential leading questions, ANY bit of information that we let slip through can compromise the report. 

Power is not a term for what a brain does.  Power is a derivative equation of SI units (force, time, distance, amps, voltage etc.).  It only involves matter and energy.  The brain doesn't exude energy other than small electrical charges.  Then you say the key factor for changing the quality of reported results is information.

Information has its own units of measure, separate from physics and materials science.  I am a big fan of Physicalism/materialism of the science ilk.  By that I mean Methodological Materialism.  By excluding considerations that are not physical - other units of measure for information can be revealed.  This is an important field for study in recognizing an informational environment.

 AI Overview
Methodological materialism is a scientific approach that restricts explanations of natural phenomena to natural causes, meaning only matter, energy, and their interactions, excluding supernatural or metaphysical explanations. It is a methodological stance or a "rule of the road" for science, rather than a philosophical belief that only material things exist, allowing scientists to operate under its framework without necessarily committing to philosophical materialism. Methodological materialism is adopted because it is practical and effective for scientific inquiry, as it focuses on observable, testable, and measurable phenomena...

* Excludes Design: By focusing solely on undirected, material causes, it excludes "creative intelligence" or intelligent design as scientific explanations.

Of course, many in the academic world prescribe to this, while claiming they have creative intelligence personally (in some unmeasurable way I suppose).  Arguing against Psi using Philosophic Physicalism/materialism is nothing but Metaphysical blather.  Communication of meaningful information is entirely in the court of Informationalism.
 
Terms like Bandwidth do address communication signals (physical) but channel capacity is derived by combining information units (bits) into the formula.  My thesis is that there is a separate environment in which we experience meaning and structured information (Shannon/Weaver).  Communication goes through channels and the physical signals are measurable.  But communication that is received and understood as to meaning - is outside of SI units.  Yet, it is clearly part of reality, including in bio-evolution. 

When measuring Psi communication, there are no SI units at its core.  Disambiguation of these units of measure is a big topic.  For those who think science can't address the topic directly - the worldview is changing.

...The University of Liège team is also trying to more thoroughly evaluate claims about out-of-body experiences. Around 79 percent of people who have an NDE report leaving their body, and some wake up knowing facts about their environment that they seemingly should not know. “I’m not saying it’s not true, but here we want to objectively test it,” Martial says.
To this end, she and her colleagues have decorated the hospital resuscitation room with unexpected objects and images, some of which are hidden in places that could be viewed only from the vantage point of someone near the ceiling. While a patient is in the resuscitation room, including while they are conscious, the team plays an audio clip of various words and animal sounds once every minute. They test for recollections of any images or sounds in follow-ups with surviving participants, and they also use video recordings to compare people’s memories with reality...

That reads to me like the visual targets are still hidden, but I do like the idea of bringing in an audio component and video recordings.

Stephen, I think you're misunderstanding my criticism of the overhyped conclusions some communities draw from NDE phenomena. I'm not saying there's some mundane explanation based on known physical laws behind all of this. And I certainly don't believe 'we know everything' or that 'consciousness is just an illusion.' Look, we don't understand the mind at all, we can't even explain how electromagnetic radiation hitting our eyes becomes the inner visual experience we have, let alone what creates our subjective thoughts.
Could psi and veridical perception during out-of-body experiences be real? Sure, obviously, we don't have answers to everything. Do I personally believe it's real? No, sadly I don't. What I've seen is that when methodology improves, these phenomena tend to fade away. I'll admit anomalies happen, and they're important clues about things we don't understand yet. But this popular idea that cardiac arrest patients commonly wake up and give precise reports of what they 'saw' while unconscious? That just doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Precise reports from experience, in comparison from physical measurement, are not represented in the same manner as the hard facts of physical states.  There is too much "play" in how it contains a defined outcome, as the same experience can be totally difference for different agents.  However, a report of experience can be realistic when is in a long term and repeating pattern.    The reports of Psi are universal in human culture.  I do agree that hype obscures rational reporting.

On the other hand, your use of a "royal we" doesn't fit our conversation (hopefully continuing).  There is a process model that can address how mind works.  It is heuristic and hence is simple and limited, so as to bring to the foreground base processes at the bottom of analysis.  However, it answers a lot of the questions as it can cover a wide range of objects, events and sub-processes.  The argument for it goes like this:

Process models attempt to bring the environmental variables into a compact and testable relationship.  Input from the variables can test the model as to predicted outcomes.  The process models of methodological materialism are well crafted and hang-together with just these kinds of outcomes.  However, it doesn't predict life, mind, culture, memory recall and how understanding can lead to creative intelligence.  Modern science has included information as a measurable that is indispensable for modeling outcomes.  If information, as structure and meaning, is seen operating in a separate environment - then a combinational approach were there are two (or more) environments can emerge.  The variables of physical and informational environments can predict a wider range of outcomes.

Methodological materialism reveals this other set of variables, germane to such endeavors as information theory, complexity theory, logic, thermodynamics and meaningful experiences (History, Sociology, etc).  With an informational environment evolving in all time, including the future and the past, sense can be made of what is going on.  There is nothing in physics that address past and future, other than its just there open to our minds.  There is a model that renders these outcomes without disrupting physics and materials science.

Can you follow the argument against physical activity being the only model; or (only) consider what thinking in terms of a separate environment of information/meaning can achieve?