Mega-thread for help with rebuttals against skeptical talking points

Gladly: 

That's not in the article?

That's not in the article?

Sorry Sci, I meant in the comments beneath the article. That's why I thought I'd best not overthink it, especially if this 'Ryan' hasn't cropped up on any of Psychology Today's other posts on NDEs and hasn't given us any reason to believe his alleged experiences.

Do we know of any notable differences between NDEs and DMT experiences besides veridical content? Sci's recent post analysing the experiences for example shows several similarities, but a few differences, such as very few people described meeting anyone 'deceased' and no reports of life reviews, or peaceful voids (void NDEs seem to get ignored a lot these days in articles).

In my opinion the 'void' is just a part of the larger experience. Not all NDE reports include every aspect of what we might consider a typical (fictional) NDE. For example, some may report being outside of the body, viewing themselves from above. But not everyone has that. Some may report meeting a being of light and being told various things, and notably being told it is not their time. Again, not everyone has that. The void, that is another aspect which not everyone has. Sometimes it is followed by some other component of the experience. Occasionally it is all that happens before the return to everyday reality.

On the topic of chemical explanations, it's worth considering that not every NDE involves physical trauma. For example, someone may be driving a vehicle, see from shifting road and traffic conditions that something inescapable is about to happen, and undergo a deep NDE. Then, moments later they are back in ordinary reality, still driving, and continue on their way - though often emotionally shaken. There is no gradual onset and gradual fading of the experience which might happen if there is some shift in blood/brain chemistry. The instantaneous shift back and forth between different realities is hard to imagine having a chemical correlation.

I suppose Sci that you're also right that certain theories may lean more towards the proponent's side in the long term, and some skeptical views have become outdated given recent evidence.

A recent example I recall (prepare for a rant here) is that, while watching the UVA session from 3 years ago on life after death, one nasty commenter peaked my interest. One of the channels he watched had responded to one of (what I think was) Discovery Science's videos, and one video he spends some time criticising their claims about an immaterial mind. His 'sources' included an old document on neural correlates from 2011, videos from David Chalmers on the HPoC, an article by Steven Pinker (who has already been criticised for his rather rigid close-mindedness) and other references to split-brain experiments and things like the usual 'brain damage causes damage to consciousness' stuff. 

At one point, he and a few commenters criticised Michael Egnor, with one commenter accusing him of being a troll on Steven Novella's blog who misunderstands the Penfield experiments and is "uninformed, likely due to ignorance, on modern neuroscience". The YouTuber in question basically goes on, alongside a guest interviewer he brought on, to criticise a few claims that the mind can affect the brain. They also remark that stimulation to the brain (particularly the frontal area) affecting one's personality and consciousness most likely indicate emergence (again though, it isn't that crystal-clear and this is a reductionist view). The amusing part though was when they talked about the whole split-brain patient stuff. As we now know, there have been two experiments recently showing that splitting the brain does NOT split consciousness, which calls into question the validity of previous experiments that claimed otherwise. I may not have much faith in Egnor myself given some of the accusations and criticisms levelled at him, but the article he wrote on split-brain patients was clearly more up-to-date.

The video in question was released in July 2019, but again things have changed and developed since then in terms of evidence and what we understand about consciousness. Both of these YouTubers fortunately were humble enough however to clarify that their materialist worldviews still lack sufficient explanatory power or sufficient evidence to be concluded as factual...before saying though that theirs still has 'precedent' to some extent. Again, this is a claim that is becoming increasingly outdated and isn't founded on hard evidence, more interpretations of correlations leading to a specific conclusion.

So not only is it increasingly obvious that so-called 'YouTube atheism'/'YouTube skepticism' is dying out, but after spending some time skimming through (militant) atheist channels on YouTube, it's pretty apparent to me 99% of them aren't very fond of discussing topics of a much more debated nature, and aren't concerned about updating themselves with recent findings. The video I'm referring to came out only a few months after the very well-made 'Science of the Soul' documentary featuring folks like Peter Fenwick and Jim Tucker. It sits currently at nearly 4 million views (and counting) and still features comments to this day. The skeptical video has only around 52,000 views.

In my opinion the 'void' is just a part of the larger experience. Not all NDE reports include every aspect of what we might consider a typical (fictional) NDE. For example, some may report being outside of the body, viewing themselves from above. But not everyone has that. Some may report meeting a being of light and being told various things, and notably being told it is not their time. Again, not everyone has that. The void, that is another aspect which not everyone has. Sometimes it is followed by some other component of the experience. Occasionally it is all that happens before the return to everyday reality.

On the topic of chemical explanations, it's worth considering that not every NDE involves physical trauma. For example, someone may be driving a vehicle, see from shifting road and traffic conditions that something inescapable is about to happen, and undergo a deep NDE. Then, moments later they are back in ordinary reality, still driving, and continue on their way - though often emotionally shaken. There is no gradual onset and gradual fading of the experience which might happen if there is some shift in blood/brain chemistry. The instantaneous shift back and forth between different realities is hard to imagine having a chemical correlation.

There's also the commonality between some NDEs and Intermission Between Life Memories, and the fact that those with Intermission Memories seem to [statistically] recall the evidential past life better.

Also the commonality between some NDEs and mystic visions.

Some skeptics will always jump from explanation to explanation. Yesterday the NDE was a memory of birth, today it's DMT, tomorrow who knows...

Some more from the neuro-biologist Gallimore on DMT possibly being a gateway to other realities:

DP [digital philosophy], the computation that is physics runs on an engine that exists in some place that we call “Other”. There is no reason to suppose that Other suffers the same kinds of restrictive laws present in this universe. Computation is such a general idea that it can exist in worlds drastically different than this one; any number of regular spatial dimensions or almost any kind of spacetime structure with almost any kind of connectivity."(Fredkin 2003)

Whilst Fredkinstops short of enthroning a super-­‐intelligent alien programmer as the architect of the cosmos, his view of the universe certainly doesn’t rule out the possibility, and it’s hard to resist inserting such a creature into his so-­‐called Other.

Even without sensory input, the human brain is perfectly content building the consensus world, and will continue to do so even during sleep, during dreaming. But, even when awake, only small amounts of sensory data are required to help shape the world (Edelman 1993, Tononiet al.1998). This is because patterns of sensory data have sculpted and moulded the connectivity of the cortical neurons such that the brain now builds the consensus world as a default. In fact, the consensus world is the only world your brain knows how to build. Or, at least, it’s the only world your brain ought to know how to build. But, of course, within seconds of DMT levels surpassing an undefined threshold, the brain begins building bizarre alien worlds of crystalline clarity and inexpressible complexity. This is perhaps as hard to explain as a child, brought up in a monolingual English family, suddenly shifting into fluent Siberian Yupik. It’s comfortably glib to dismiss the DMT experience as “an exotic aberration of the brain's perceptual mechanics” (Kent 2004), but the reports of thousands of users across the world suggest otherwise. When the content of large numbers of trip reports is analysed (see (Gallimore 2013)), in many cases, the worlds visited under the influence of DMT seem strikingly similar across users and yet to bear no relationship whatsoever to the consensus world, and the assertion that this results from the “brain's own pattern-­‐matching systems trying to impose order on chaotic patterns” (Kent 2004)becomes less than persuasive. Whilst it is tempting to appeal to the brain’s unbounded and yet normally untapped creativity to explain the DMT visions, those dismissing the DMT worlds as purely hallucinatory offer no convincing explanation as to why the brain would impose ‘order’ on chaotic brain activity by generating visions of elves singing impossible objects into existence,or super-­‐intelligent entities weaving the fabric of reality.This difficulty in explaining how the brain could render these worlds without access to extrinsic sensory data from them, together with the large proportion of DMT users arriving in the same type of world –highly artificial, constructed, inorganic, and in essence technological (Hancock 2006)–and meeting the same types of entities, leads many to conclude that the DMT worlds have an objective existence independent of the user and that the brain does receive data from them. This interpretation of the DMT experience has been popularised as a sort of tuning model...

Though I'd challenge the next part:

But here’s the problem: even if the DMT reality is real –and there’snothing in the laws of physics to rule out alternate universes as such–the most astonishing revelation would not be the existence of such a world, but the fact we had the ability to access it.There seems to be no mechanism for the brain to receive, parse, and render sensory data from an alternate reality –this is what I call the data input problem. However, the simulation argument might provide a solution.

I don't think reality, or even just the reality of this universe, needs to be an actual simulation? Wouldn't you just a higher frame to have produced the lower frame of the mundane universe, or rather any kind of intelligent design?

Gallimore: "In fact, the consensus world is the only world your brain knows how to build. Or, at least, it’s the only world your brain ought to know how to build. But, of course, within seconds of DMT levels surpassing an undefined threshold, the brain begins building bizarre alien worlds of crystalline clarity and inexpressible complexity. "

In this statement Gallimore takes the typical materialist mind-brain position, taking it for granted that consciousness is a function of the physical brain: that the brain builds human consciousness. This is untenable given the NDE evidence.

There seems to be some sort of fundamental disconnect between the phenomenon of the separation of human consciousness and the physical brain occurring during veridical NDEs (involving paranormal perception often when the physical brain is rendered greatly dysfunctional), and weird phenomena like many DMT experiences which apparently are of visiting a realm of superintelligent alien beings manipulating reality. The DMT reality is very different from the NDE reality and greatly conflicts with it. 

As Gallimore later notes, it instead perhaps seems as if in DMT experiences the mind may be leaving the physical brain and visiting some sort of fundamentally existentially different realm of existence. But this DMT realm is very different than the one visited during NDEs. How to interpret all this?

NDEs very much seem to be actual visits to a spiritual realm of existence. DMT experiences may either be hallucinations or visits to a very different and alien reality.

The deciding factors: DMT experiences seem to lack most of the veridical aspects experienced in NDEs and don't occur when the physical brain is dysfunctional (therefore incapable of building any sort of world). With DMT the brain is functioning, and veridical proof of separation from the physical brain is lacking. So perhaps that would be grounds to rate the DMT realm as probably really hallucinatory despite the factors like the feeling of uncanny reality and the commonness of many elements of the experience between different experiencers.

Gallimore: "In fact, the consensus world is the only world your brain knows how to build. Or, at least, it’s the only world your brain ought to know how to build. But, of course, within seconds of DMT levels surpassing an undefined threshold, the brain begins building bizarre alien worlds of crystalline clarity and inexpressible complexity. "

In this statement Gallimore takes the typical materialist mind-brain position, taking it for granted that consciousness is a function of the physical brain: that the brain builds human consciousness. This is untenable given the NDE evidence.

Is this really a materialist position, that the brain has to build up an image of the world from data? Even an Idealist like Donald Hoffman holds this view.

Just to note this guy wrote Alien Information Theory, a book about how our reality is like a video game and we have to climb the ladder of enlightenment toward the programmer God(s).

As Gallimore later notes, it instead perhaps seems as if in DMT experiences the brain may be leaving the physical brain and visiting some sort of fundamentally existentially different realm of existence. But this DMT realm is very different than the one visited during NDEs. How to interpret all this?

NDEs very much seem to be actual visits to a spiritual realm of existence. DMT experiences may either be hallucinations or visits to a very different and alien reality.

The deciding factors: DMT experiences seem to lack most of the veridical aspects experienced in NDEs and don't occur when the physical brain is dysfunctional (therefore incapable of building any sort of world). With DMT the brain is functioning, and veridical proof of separation from the physical brain is lacking. So perhaps that would be grounds to rate the DMT realm as probably really hallucinatory.

I agree that the veridical cases are the major force behind the NDEs, though as mentioned above the commonality between NDEs and Intermission Memories is worth some consideration as well. Without these I'd be more inclined to believe NDEs were hallucinations, and the DMT experience was more likely the real deal. [Though of course the survival of consciousness would be a different thing than the places/entities experienced.]

However there's at least one DMT - well ayahuasca - case off the top of my head where the experiencer claims to have obtained information via an OOBE. This phenomenon is only now being studied in parapsychology so the jury is still out I'd say. There's some historical stuff about Psi and psychedelics, but at the moment can't be too sure.

I've never taken a psychedelic nor have I had an NDE, so I can only go by reports. There's definitely something interesting going on with both, enough so that someone claiming NDEs are "just" DMT trips is really fooling themselves into thinking they've cut off the possibility of a supernatural reality.

I do think that if we had more confirmed Psi cases from DMT experiencers we'd have to tentatively conclude the NDEr and the DMT tripper are accessing different places most, if not all, of the time.

I suppose this comment is more of a personal worry really, in that I know not all neuroscientists are materialists/physicalists, but the fact some prominent and popular ones are upsets me since so many will consider them to be authorities. Steven Novella is probably the best example, since his blog is popular with some skeptics and he just dismisses the work of people like the UVA. He apparently claimed he has read at least some of their work and still isn't convinced, and I do remember reading that response from Ed Kelly who doesn't seem to like him that much. 

I'm not sure if any of you frequent his blog at all, I certainly don't and don't plan to. I mentioned it on here before, but it does upset and sadden me that he comes across like he wants to debunk all this stuff. I don't know how credible he is on the subject, though I've read on here that he's one of those people who falsely claimed AWARE was a total failure. He is a neuroscientist, but should I be concerned about his views on these phenomena? 

I've not been doing very well recently so I may be taking another lengthy break for a while since it's probably best for me, but this has been somewhat bothering me for a bit. I just wish I didn't feel sort of persecuted for my beliefs online.

Is this really a materialist position, that the brain has to build up an image of the world from data? Even an Idealist like Donald Hoffman holds this view.

Certainly it is the materialist position that since consciousness is a function of the brain, the brain must build up an image of the of the world in consciousness by processing the sensory data coming in from the eyes, ears, tactile nerves, etc. 

You may recall the failure of many years of research into finding the neural structures in the brain responsible for sensory fusion in consciousness into an awareness of the world in 3-D. Especially they have been looking for visual fusion into 3-D awareness. After all this work it seems unlikely that such structures will ever be found, implying that they simply don't exist. The experience of NDEers when apparently out of body and observing the operating room or emergency room from an elevated physical location (especially when he brain is dysfunctional) also implies that 3-D sensory fusion in consciousness and therefore awareness and consciousness of the world are functions of the spirit rather than the brain.