I’ve had general anesthesia, it was just like falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.
If death is like that, then there’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of.
Comment on Does Consciousness Disappear in Dreamless Sleep?
LanternEverywhere@kbin.social 1 year ago
Sleep is NOTHING like death. You're still experiencing lots of stuff, you still very much have a sense of self, you're still thinking things, your brain is still processing lots of information.
General anesthesia - now THAT is a real close period to what being dead is.
Lorindol@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
TrustingZebra@lemmy.one 1 year ago
It’s not sleeping I’m worried about, it’s not waking up.
Vigge93@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Probably is. If they gave you a little too much anesthesia so you didn’t wake up, you would probably drift off the same, and then just not wake up.
BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
For me when I had anesthesia I quickly closed my eyes with the surgeon talking, when I opened my eyes the surgeon was still talking so I was wondering when the surgery would start.
Of course when I opened my eyes it was 5 hours later and after the surgery but it took me a while to realized that.
PixxlMan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s pretty cool that you could just continue your thought after basically pausing your brain for five hours. Kind of like hibernation for a pc I guess.
IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 1 year ago
Except the agonizing pain that precedes death
FaceDeer@kbin.social 1 year ago
Depends on the death.
Agent641@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Saying “you too” to the waiter after he says “enjoy your meal sir”
JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 1 year ago
If it’s death from too much anaesthesia (or, apparently, freezing), there is none.
insomniac@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Is there a way to actually know that?
SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 1 year ago
I’ve had general anesthesia, it was just like falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.
What if anesthesia actually just blocks your memories and physical reactions, but you actually experience everything that happens to you in absolute terror?
CeeBee@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What if anesthesia actually just blocks your memories and physical reactions, but you actually experience everything that happens to you in absolute terror?
Latest studies with FMRIs and other tools have found that general anesthesia decouples the sections of the brain from each other. All the various parts of the brain stop communicating. It’s an entities different state than sleep based on the brain activity.
Normally when we have various stimuli or are asleep, neural activity “flows” around from one section to the other. When under general anesthesia rise flows are isolated and don’t connect to other sections of the brain.
This has actually given us a huge clue as to where consciousness comes from and what makes it a thing.
It also helps explain why going under is just lights out and no drama or anything. It’s like an off switch for the “person”.
kevinbacon@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Thats exactly what some do, depends on the anesthetic, but it doesn’t matter because if a memory never forms it may as well not have happened.
SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 1 year ago
if a memory never forms it may as well not have happened
That is an interesting philosophical question.
If suffering is not remembered, was there even suffering? And if there was, does it matter? I can think of a few counterexamples of that, for example: a killer who tortures his victim before killing them.
jarfil@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There was a case of a guy, where they botched the anesthesia, and he was just paralyzed but conscious the whole time during some invasive surgery. They realized their mistake, and tried to fix it by giving him some amnesic so he wouldn’t retain the memories.
After getting discharged, he wouldn’t remember anything… but kept having nightmares, and a few weeks later took his own life.
So it seems like memories don’t need to be fully formed to mess one up.
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I had to be put under a few years ago to extract wisdom teeth and I wouldn’t say I was 100% gone. I remember seeing the light through my eyelids, hearing muffled unintelligible voices, and feeling mild tension as they worked in my mouth, jostling my head around. No pain, but notable light sensations. It also felt like it was over in a minute for an hour and a half procedure. Was definitely a wild experience, but certainly no terror remembered, thankfully…
Croquette@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I think that most people aren’t afraid of death itself. It’s more the suffering to get there.
ezures@lemmy.wtf 1 year ago
The most scary stuff is just not doing or experiencing anything after death, at least for me. (Probably the biggest fomo on earth)
Croquette@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Life is a series of missing opportunities. When you choose to do something, you miss out on a multitude of other options. That is fine.
But I get the FOMO, it took me a few years of active mindfulness to reign it in.
zeppo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What’s hard for me to accept is the idea of never waking up. It seems like it has to end sometime.
jdsquared@lemmy.world 1 year ago
See for me I’m not sure why that’s hard to accept. I think I first heard it from Alan Watts, that there were billions of years of space before I was conscious, so why am I afraid of billions of years of nothing after I’m gone?
aberrate_junior_beatnik@midwest.social 1 year ago
Not having something in the first place and losing something you have are two different things. It’s like saying to someone who just lost their partner “don’t feel bad, for the first n years of your life you didn’t have a partner and you were fine”
Additionally, it’s not billions of years of nothing. It’s an eternity of nothing. Billions of years may as well be the blink of an eye relative to eternity.
God, I’m getting anxious just talking about it.
zeppo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I didn’t say i was afraid of it, just that it seemed unlikely. The billions before you were conscious ended somehow, right?
PixxlMan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m genuinely surprised that the idea that something bad might happen to you when you’re dead or that it could be painful etc is anywhere near as prevalent as it is. To me, that makes absolutely no sense. Of course dying might be painful… But death? Once you brain no longer works? Feels obvious to me that you won’t feel, well, anything. The thing that frightens me about death wouldn’t be the experience of being dead, but rather not being able to do any more things and not existing anymore.
Anamnesis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This reasoning goes all the way back to Epicurus. With regard to your latter points, Epicurus thought they were also solved by being dead. For someone to miss out on something, they have to exist in the first place. No person, no missing out. And for not existing to be bad, a person must be around to be upset about it.
Kodemystic@lemmy.kodemystic.dev 1 year ago
But isn’t there a fear anyway? Because its forever. Also not seeing loved ones ever again. Not enjoying the nice things ever again.
Rowsdower@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
[deleted]BigNote@lemm.ee 1 year ago
It’s not rational. Evolution has hardwired us and every other organism that has the necessary neural architecture to fear death and seek to avoid it. A species that didn’t have an instinctive and heritable aversion to death would not last very long.
jarfil@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Add constant pain, and that’s what I call life.
Anamnesis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
When I’m asleep I’m not experiencing shit. Close eyes, moment of black, awake again the next day.
grozzle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is not the normal human experience. Check if you’re a robot?
bingbong@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
My diagnostics said “all systems normal” so that can’t be it
samus12345@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You just don’t remember your dreams.
Anamnesis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s probably true. I have definitely had some dreams. But maybe only fifty over thirty-seven years.
newIdentity@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Well except Ketamine and some other substances that are used in anesthesia.
LanternEverywhere@kbin.social 1 year ago
That's not general anesthesia, that's like twilight anesthesia or some other term like that.
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Conscious sedation is the term of art. Fentanyl and versed are commonly used for this tour of sedation.
Kodemystic@lemmy.kodemystic.dev 1 year ago
Coma?
Manifish_Destiny@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You sound a lot like a guy who isn’t dead. Not sure if I should trust your opinion.