Lekatt's Thread: The *only* place to find out about Lekatt's beliefs!

[tomndebb]

@Muffin

Your beliefs are truly sickening.

There is already a Pit thread open in which you can express your angst.
Leave the personal remarks out of your posts, here.

[ /Modding ]

[lekatt]

I was just notified my brother is in ICU due to complete kidney failure. I am needed there, will return in a few days. No heart for this debate right now.

[Fear_Itself]

Best wishes, leroy.

[pravnik]

Likewise - sorry to hear about your brother.

[Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension]

Best wishes, lekatt.

[E-Sabbath]

Two guys at work had that happen to them in the last three months. Both of them pulled through it okay. Though slightly odd colors for a while.

Best wishes, Leroy. Let’s hope that he got to the hospital in time, and he’ll be fine.

[begbert2]

@Try2B_Comprehensive

Seriously though, frame the debate thusly: Lekatt claims direct experience. Others ask for cites. But scientific evidence will be expressed in terms of objective reality. MRI’s, cat scans, x-rays, electron microscopes, neuron photography and all that. However, even mapping every last atom of a human body does not provide an explanation for subjective experience. How is this even possible?

Scientists: explain. Then maybe we can tease Lekatt’s experience into the realm of science after all.

Not to debate in lekatt’s abscence, but what sort of explanation are you asking for? What definition of subjective experience are you talking about?

Supposed I set a video camera on a tripod. The light rays that are hitting the camera lens are only hitting the camera lens; the image received thereby is unique to the camera, and thus subjective. The camera is therefore having a subjective experience. There’s nothing about this kind of subjective experience that confuses scientists.

Now suppose we hook the camera up to a computer that receives the image information, scans it, looks for faces, interprets expressions, attempts to lip read, and attempts to obey the spoken commands. Suppose this computer stores the video it reads in permanent memory and uses the stored information to improve its interpretation accuracy. Suppose that in the processes of doing this it regularly audits its own memory to distill out the most useful identification metricts from the images.

None of this is outside the realm of science to understand. Now watch this - I propose that this process, from the computer’s point of view, may be a similar type of things to our point of view of our own consciousness. Can I prove it is? Certainly not. Can science prove it is? No again - we haven’t figured out how to scan and interpret brain waves so as to be able to parse out what they mean as they’re happening. Does this mean it’s impossible to scan and interpret brain waves? Conceptually no; to the degree that the processes are occuring in physical reality we can in theory observe them, once we figure out how. And once we can observe them, we can in theory figure out how to interpret them, though it doubtlessly would be a very complex language to teach ourself to read.

Not that we have to figure out how to interpret them - all we actually need to do is copy them and simulate them somehow. Development continues apace on robot limbs and eyes and the like; perhaps we can someday plug those into a computer running a xerox copy of somebody’s brain and see if the result can tapdance. If it can, wouldn’t that be a shock to the theists! If not, well, try try again - or get back to the business of parsing the brainwaves and figure out what’s actually going on in there.

[Jackmannii]

@lekatt

The day will come when near death experience research will overwhelm mainstream science. Then we can get on with helping people in ways that are meaningful.

As opposed to all the ways medical science helps people that apparently mean squat in lekatt-world (except for your brother I suppose, who will hopefully respond well to treatment).

@lekatt

…there are no limitations in the spirit world.

And no limit to the contradictions and lack of evidence spirit-worlders can tolerate. All will be explained one great day in the future, and if not, well, it could happen.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@lekatt

A know what fatal means, I was given 6 months to live 20 years ago. A friend of mine was given 4 months that was 10 years ago. You see there is a higher authority than doctors.

Actuaries?

@lekatt

I was just notified my brother is in ICU due to complete kidney failure. I am needed there, will return in a few days. No heart for this debate right now.

Best of luck to your brother.

[Triskadecamus]

So, Lekatt,

Do you believe that every single person in every single hospital in the US should be maintained on life support forever? Are there any limits on how long that person should be withheld from death?

Are fifty bullet wounds to the skull enough to assure you that the person could never survive? Certainly that isn’t beyond the possibility of a miracle. Actually being dead isn’t enough to prevent the will of God from resurrecting the flesh, spirit, soul, and throwing in cosmetic repair as well. Of course the presence of a respirator, or feeding tube would be similarly trivial in regards to the will of God. Nothing that man does is beyond the ability of God to restore, or take a soul.

So, you have to decide when to let someone die. That decision has no bearing on the state of their soul, and you commit hubris of an astounding level to imply that you have some influence in that matter. Death is a legal matter, salvation, and the state of grace are not involved. And the mundane world we live in has this peculiarity about it now, because of our science. We can keep a body functional with or without a human mind, or brain. How much of our efforts in medicine, and how much of a family’s resources do you want the law to require before we stop saving some poor bastard’s life?

Tris

[Bryan_Ekers]

@pravnik

Honest question: would it be worthwhile to attempt to preserve the brain following decapitation?

Ed Harris: She has a strong head! She wants to LIVE!

[Irishman]

Really Not All That Bright said:

I have a hard time taking anyone seriously when they refer to themselves as a doctor but aren’t actually licensed to practice medicine.

Wait, someone who went to medical school, graduated, got licensed, and practiced medicine for some time, but now has decided not to actively practice and thus let the licensing expire, and you don’t think they earned the title “Doctor”? :dubious:
lekatt said:

… or read part of it and say it’s faulted or some other lame excuse.

If that is a true assessment, then it is not a lame excuse.

[Guinastasia]

@lekatt

You don’t have a clue as to what my beliefs are, you are just assuming you do.

Of course we know what your beliefs are – you’ve stated them time and time again, and you have an entire website dedicated to them. We simply disagree with them.
Good luck to you and your brother. (I mean that – I’m not being sarcastic.)

[Minnie_Luna]

So I did a Medline search for "Near Death Experience " and did get a number of results.

Here is an example:

Neurology. 2006 Apr 11;66(7):1003-9.
Does the arousal system contribute to near death experience?

Nelson KR, Mattingly M, Lee SA, Schmitt FA.

Department of Neurology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA. knelson@email.uky.edu

Comment in:

* Neurology. 2006 Dec 26;67(12):2265; author reply 2265. 

Abstract

The neurophysiologic basis of near death experience (NDE) is unknown. Clinical observations suggest that REM state intrusion contributes to NDE. Support for the hypothesis follows five lines of evidence: REM intrusion during wakefulness is a frequent normal occurrence, REM intrusion underlies other clinical conditions, NDE elements can be explained by REM intrusion, cardiorespiratory afferents evoke REM intrusion, and persons with an NDE may have an arousal system predisposing to REM intrusion. To investigate a predisposition to REM intrusion, the life-time prevalence of REM intrusion was studied in 55 NDE subjects and compared with that in age/gender-matched control subjects. Sleep paralysis as well as sleep-related visual and auditory hallucinations were substantially more common in subjects with an NDE. These findings anticipate that under circumstances of peril, an NDE is more likely in those with previous REM intrusion. REM intrusion could promote subjective aspects of NDE and often associated syncope. Suppression of an activated locus ceruleus could be central to an arousal system predisposed to REM intrusion and NDE.

and

Psychol Sci. 2004 Apr;15(4):254-8.
Near-death experiences and the temporal lobe.

Britton WB, Bootzin RR.

Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. wbritton@u.arizona.edu
Abstract

Many studies in humans suggest that altered temporal lobe functioning, especially functioning in the right temporal lobe, is involved in mystical and religious experiences. We investigated temporal lobe functioning in individuals who reported having transcendental “near-death experiences” during life-threatening events. These individuals were found to have more temporal lobe epileptiform electroencephalographic activity than control subjects and also reported significantly more temporal lobe epileptic symptoms. Contrary to predictions, epileptiform activity was nearly completely lateralized to the left hemisphere. The near-death experience was not associated with dysfunctional stress reactions such as dissociation, posttraumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse, but rather was associated with positive coping styles. Additional analyses revealed that near-death experiencers had altered sleep patterns, specifically, a shorter duration of sleep and delayed REM sleep relative to the control group. These results suggest that altered temporal lobe functioning may be involved in the near-death experience and that individuals who have had such experiences are physiologically distinct from the general population.

Personally, I believe it is a psychological response to trauma. Not all people respond to stress in the same way, so not everyone will have one.

Like this guy says:

Lancet. 2000 Feb 5;355(9202):460-3.
Dissociation in people who have near-death experiences: out of their bodies or out of their minds?

Greyson B.

Department of Psychiatric Medicine, University of Virginia Health System, Charlottesville 22908-0152, USA. cbg4d@virginia.edu
Abstract

BACKGROUND: Some people who come close to death report having experiences in which they transcend the boundaries of the ego and the confines of time and space. Such near-death experiences (NDEs) share some features with the phenomenon of dissociation, in which a person’s self identity becomes detached from bodily sensation. This study explored the frequency of dissociative symptoms in people who had come close to death. METHODS: 96 individuals who had had self-reported NDEs, and 38 individuals who had come close to death but who had not had NDEs completed a mailed questionnaire that included a measure of “depth” of near-death experience (the NDE scale) and a measure of dissociative symptoms (the Dissociative Experiences Scale). Median scores in the two groups were compared with Mann-Whitney U tests. The association between depth of NDE and dissociative symptoms was tested by Spearman’s rank-order correlation between scores on the NDE scale and the dissociative experiences scale. FINDINGS: People who reported NDEs also reported significantly more dissociative symptoms than did the comparison group. Among those who reported NDEs, the depth of the experience was positively correlated with dissociative symptoms, although the level of symptoms was substantially lower than that of patients with pathological dissociative disorders. INTERPRETATION: The pattern of dissociative symptoms reported by people who have had NDEs is consistent with a non-pathological dissociative response to stress, and not with a psychiatric disorder. A greater understanding of the mechanism of dissociation may shed further light on near-death and other mystical or transcendental experiences.

[Guinastasia]

To me, a “NDE” would be something like “nearly” being hit by a car, or being “nearly” falling off a cliff. In other words, “nearly” dying.

People “nearly” die everyday. You have a heart attack and perhaps – oh, what’s the term – “stroke out?” on the table, and your heart is shocked back into beating. That’s “nearly dying.”

Unfortunately, lekatt doesn’t want to hear that sort of thing. He wants the supernatural stuff.

[begbert2]

@Guinastasia

To me, a “NDE” would be something like “nearly” being hit by a car, or being “nearly” falling off a cliff. In other words, “nearly” dying.

People “nearly” die everyday. You have a heart attack and perhaps – oh, what’s the term – “stroke out?” on the table, and your heart is shocked back into beating. That’s “nearly dying.”

Unfortunately, lekatt doesn’t want to hear that sort of thing. He wants the supernatural stuff.

To be fair, the term “Near Death Experience” has a commonly understood meaning and it’s not yours, it’s lekatt’s. As best I can tell there’s precisely nothing out of the ordinary about the way he uses the term, other than the fact he believes they’re both real and the fundamental reason for living, or something.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Irishman

Wait, someone who went to medical school, graduated, got licensed, and practiced medicine for some time, but now has decided not to actively practice and thus let the licensing expire, and you don’t think they earned the title “Doctor”? :dubious:

Of course not. My mother retired in 1996. Guess whether she still used the prefix Dr. in 1997?

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

@begbert2

Not to debate in lekatt’s abscence, but what sort of explanation are you asking for? What definition of subjective experience are you talking about?

Supposed I

Ok, stop right there. ‘I’. Made out of stuff, how is it possible for beings to be self-aware?

set a video camera on a tripod. The light rays that are hitting the camera lens are only hitting the camera lens; the image received thereby is unique to the camera, and thus subjective. The camera is therefore having a subjective experience. There’s nothing about this kind of subjective experience that confuses scientists.

There is nothing controversial about your explanation, I agree. However, the camera, the light, the film- it is all just a contrived set of cause-effect relationships. A bunch of billiard balls if you will, confined to certain channels such that they can only bounce in certain ways, with predictable results. There is no ‘I’ there.

Now suppose we hook the camera up to a computer that receives the image information, scans it, looks for faces, interprets expressions, attempts to lip read, and attempts to obey the spoken commands. Suppose this computer stores the video it reads in permanent memory and uses the stored information to improve its interpretation accuracy. Suppose that in the processes of doing this it regularly audits its own memory to distill out the most useful identification metricts from the images.

None of this is outside the realm of science to understand. Now watch this - I propose that this process, from the computer’s point of view, may be a similar type of things to our point of view of our own consciousness.

Yes, but again, a computer is just a fancier set of billiard-ball channels. If you ascribe to it a point of view, you are more likely to deny the existence of human identity rather than demonstrate the existence of a computer with an identity. Are you trying to say that a robot is self-aware? Ummm, how? It is just a machine.
I could say more (and I hope you get a good laugh out of this next bit) but I am honestly going to be late for yoga now. I’ll come back tonight or tomorrow.

Good luck to Lekatt’s brother!

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Irishman

Wait, someone who went to medical school, graduated, got licensed, and practiced medicine for some time, but now has decided not to actively practice and thus let the licensing expire, and you don’t think they earned the title “Doctor”? :dubious:

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Of course not. My mother retired in 1996. Guess whether she still used the prefix Dr. in 1997?

Actually, on reflection, it just occurred to me that I have no idea if most physicians continue calling themselves “doctor” after they are no longer practicing medicine, so maybe “of course not” is a bit much.

[pravnik]

@Bryan_Ekers

Ed Harris: She has a strong head! She wants to LIVE!

Come to think of it, do you attempt to save the head or the body, or both? If you lose the head, do you keep the body alive until you find it?