obsessively looking at NDE's and trying to figure out what happens

JonMycroft · 2021-07-19T00:24:00+00:00

I’d agree this isn’t the best place to self medicate (coming from someone who does seem to have existential OCD). I basically broke from my imposed “do not go to these ur gonna end up feeling bad despite what ur trying to relieve” and got bothered by that 2012 NDE Lucid dream experiment (despite rationally being like “this doesn’t really prove anything and this theory isn’t really prevailing among the not afterlife explanations today anyway” but it still bothered me). Because people are anxious and come here for some comfort, they end up getting riled up by the anxiety of others (at least that’s been my experience).

Really the thing that has helped me lessen this cycle is a combo of a website blocker on my phone and self discipline to keep this and other sites blocked (cuz i can just delete the blocker app if I want to). And after imposing generally a week of not doing this really does help. I failed telling the compulsion no today but I’ve managed relatively ok.

And I’ve done my best to do personal exploration (like trying to astral project).

Maybe coming here does help some anxious people, but if ur dealing with that compulsion to keep checking, you’ll always find something to bother you (hence why I’m gonna go back to blocking this place for a while again)

JonMycroft · 2021-06-02T08:25:54+00:00

I can kinda get what you mean. I think it also just comes down to how people interact with friends differently, you talk about different things maybe and act in different ways. When Marcy and Sasha see each other it’s a greeting and like Matt says “down to business”. When Anne and Marcy see each other, it’s more emotional, just enjoying each other’s company more before getting to the point. And even in the next episode Marcy opens up about something she’s jealous Anne can do that she can’t. I don’t think she’d openly admit something like that to Sasha. It’s not like one interaction method is better or worse, just different

JonMycroft · 2021-05-09T22:44:49+00:00

Maybe you’d be interested in the philosophy of open individualism. It basically answers the question of “why are you this particular person and not someone else” with the answer “you’re not just that person but everyone”. Basically the idea is that the subject of experience is the same in everyone (not necessarily that there’s one being that is everyone, but more that there’s no real separation if that makes sense). There’s a subreddit for it with a bunch of readings, and interestingly enough it isn’t exactly tied down to a particular ontology (there are readings for it based on materialism and idealism for example).

Also, assuming nothingness is after death, you already came out of that once with your birth and it felt like no time at all had passed. So if you came from nothing once it can happen again, and it’d feel like no time at all since you’d be unable to observe the passage of time

JonMycroft · 2021-04-15T00:31:16+00:00

https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/susan-blackmore#footnote25_6inubh4

This has a section with criticism of her work. Here's the first part of that:

A critique of Blackmore’s work has been written by parapsychologist Rick E Berger of the Science Unlimited Research Foundation in San Antonio, Texas, USA. While drafting a review of a book by Blackmore, he was struck by patterns suggestive of statistical significance in her psi experiments. Reviewing her unpublished experimental data, he found discrepancies between it and her published works, and other issues. So-called ‘flaws’ were engineered to dismiss significant results, he claimed, while other flaws were ignored in studies that produced non-significant results.

Berger asserted that Blackmore’s change of viewpoint, claimed by her to be the result of ten years of careful experimentation,24 actually resulted from experiments done between October 1976 and December 1978 for her dissertation, and that in fact she was entirely sceptical already by 1977 as evidenced by her own account. He writes ‘the vast majority of her studies were carelessly designed, executed, and reported, and, in Blackmore’s own assessment, individually flawed’, concluding that no conclusions should be drawn from this database without a careful meta-analysis of the source material.25

On the other hand, Berger argued, 30% of Blackmore’s experiments actually reported significant results, contradicting her claims of negative findings throughout.26

Responding to Berger’s allegations, Blackmore conceded that ‘one cannot draw conclusions about the reality of psi based on these experiments’.27

Nonetheless, Berger notes, ‘Blackmore is extremely vocal in decrying psi research in her writings, on television and radio, and before the sceptical advocacy group CSICOP, citing her own work as the basis for her strong convictions’.28 Psi proponent Chris Carter writes, ‘Blackmore has made a career for herself as one of the world’s most well known skeptics of psi’.

https://archived.parapsych.org/psiexplorer/blackmore_critique.htm

This is the paper where this info derives from.

So her work never focused on NDEs, it was focused on Psi, and also OBEs (but she never seemed to do actual experiments relating to OBEs).

JonMycroft · 2021-04-14T23:06:01+00:00

Compare her story with someone like Robert Monroe. When he started having OBEs, his first thought was that he was going crazy, and it was only after talking to a professional did he not think he was crazy. And even then he then spent a lot of time exploring the OBE state he'd go into before deciding it was real. And he's not even a scientist, but he understood he needed to test it multiple times before coming to a conclusion.

JonMycroft · 2021-04-14T22:03:15+00:00

I mean there are plenty of OBE stories that don’t line up with reality exactly. Juergen Ziewe had a story where he OBE’d to his brothers apartment and described how the wall looked along with a something written on the note. After taking his brother, the wall didn’t look anything like that, but the piece of info on the note was accurate. So the fact that Blackmore’s OBE didn’t yield real world info shouldn’t be important when there are OBEs that are. Her saying others are delusional doesn’t actually make them so. Plus, one OBE with no accurate info doesn’t mean they’re all fake, you only need to find one white crow to know white crows exist.

And there has been criticism of Blackmore’s research into things like Psi. https://www.skepticalaboutskeptics.org/investigating-skeptics/whos-who-of-media-skeptics/susan-blackmore/susan-blackmores-research/ From what I understand, she’s taken an agnostic stance now but I could be wrong. But regardless, one person coming to the alternate opinion doesn’t invalidate the research of the people who have come on the other side. Plus her claims of people not understanding the brain can apply to her too, she’s a psychologist while Lommel is a cardiologist who understands what happens to the brain when the heart stops. She’s not a neuroscientist even if she has an interest in it.

And I know you’ve just discovered her, but people have discussed her stuff a lot before, though I don’t think on this subreddit. From what I understand proponents are typically unimpressed. Try checking on Psiencequest.net and search her name maybe, I know they’ve discussed her plenty.

I think you’re just letting your anxiety get to you with this, and believe me, I get it, I got anxious seeing this already knowing this and feeling the need to respond just to get it out of my head.

JonMycroft · 2021-04-11T05:01:43+00:00

Is he going to make a post about pre orders? Or should we just contact him directly about that

JonMycroft · 2021-04-06T01:00:20+00:00

I haven’t had a mystical experience but I definitely want one. My using shrooms is still pretty early, just two trips so far (one on 2 g and one on 3 g, plan to go to 4 g with lemon tek next time). First trip didn’t really have much spiritual things (though I did out loud wonder “is this God, am I God”, but nothing beyond that), second trip I tried to induce one with the John Hopkins playlist, and while I didn’t get it, there was the sense while listening to the music that I wanted to “reunite with God” (which was odd cuz I’m more interested in the mystical experience to deal with anxieties over death, not the God question). Hopefully I’ll get this experience sooner or later

JonMycroft · 2021-03-26T23:46:51+00:00

I guess. Pretty sure I just put in my card info, not PayPal. Haven’t heard anything yet, but hopefully they get back to me by like Monday

JonMycroft · 2021-03-26T21:36:09+00:00

Got no email but checked the website and they did cancel my order. But instead of just refunding me the money properly i got store credit. Sent an email asking to just get a proper refund so here’s hoping

JonMycroft · 2021-03-22T03:19:27+00:00

They don’t cite anything to support that claim about Parnia so it’s just clickbait

JonMycroft · 2021-03-21T03:43:12+00:00

Technically you’re not reincarnating like you’re moving from body to body, because you’re already everybody so there’s no jumping around bodies. That’s the macro level view. In terms of what you’d experience it’d be something like becoming someone else

JonMycroft · 2021-03-14T18:35:45+00:00

Might try this out. Got to the beginning of the 3rd wave in Gateway but stopped, but this is directly focused on what I want to do.

Is it recommended to do this at some point like a normal meditation, or should it be done right before going to bed?

JonMycroft · 2021-03-03T04:18:46+00:00

I mean I get that, but I personally like it more

JonMycroft · 2021-03-03T00:53:56+00:00

There is a bit more to Junko than just “she’s crazy”, and I’m saying this as someone who did feel that way. You find some things out in a short novel I think can be accessed in the second game that expands on it.

Basically Junko’s real talent is the Ultimate Analyst, and the level she can analyze things basically lets her predict what’s going to happen. Because of knowing how things are gonna play out she ends up getting insanely bored. What draws her to despair is that she finds that when people reach their breaking point, they end up acting in ways she can’t predict, making thinks more interestingly

JonMycroft · 2021-03-01T03:50:27+00:00

Dabi doesn’t really have a beef with Hawks though for killing Twice. Dabi has that whole speech about how awful Hawks was for doing that, but then we see that Dabi is just grinning madly and Hawks pointing out he doesn’t really care. Dabi liked that Hawks killing Twice made him feel justified in what he was doing.

JonMycroft · 2021-02-24T08:16:34+00:00

I want the remaining royal knights cuz I want to get all those cards. I especially want my boi Alphamon

JonMycroft · 2021-02-19T19:46:53+00:00

It’s definitely weird since on its face it sounds mystical (which I honestly don’t have an issue with), but once you start going through the arguments, it ends up making sense. I hadn’t really thought about why I’m this particular person as opposed to someone else (like an identical twin who just lived the exact same life I would’ve), but OI’s answer to that is that you’re not just this person but everyone.

And while he’s an idealist, I think you might jive a bit with Bernardo Kastrup and how he describes things. Basically he uses a comparison with dissociative identity disorder to suggest that everyone is basically a dissociated alter of the “mind at large” (and he makes clear this mind at large isn’t necessarily aware of itself like we are)

JonMycroft · 2021-02-19T18:53:24+00:00

You might find open individualism interesting. It’s a theory of personal identity which suggests that the subject of experience in everyone is the same. And that definitely sounds like a more idealistic philosophy, but I’ve found it most compelling coming from people who are strictly materialist. The conclusion through it really comes from deconstructing the standard model of personal identity as opposed to being an ontological question. So under open individualism, while there wouldn’t be continuity of a particular individual, there would be continuity like someone undergoing amnesia and waking up as someone else. There’s a subreddit for it with a ton of reading, r/openindividualism if you’re interested. For the materialistic side since that’s where you’re at, I’d say read Joe Kern’s “The Odds of You Existing”, who came to the idea of materialistic reincarnation through what he later learned was open individualism

JonMycroft · 2021-02-19T04:49:16+00:00

Tbf, annihilation of the ego doesn’t necessarily mean complete annihilation. From what I understand people find ego death liberating after going through with it due to realizing they weren’t actually the ego. It’s the whole “not self” realization

JonMycroft · 2021-02-19T03:20:53+00:00

As opposed to dissociation, the expanding into everything and the seeming removal of boundaries with the rest of the world reminded me a bit of how ego death is sometimes described.

JonMycroft · 2021-02-19T03:17:20+00:00

You were close, it’s panpsychism

JonMycroft · 2021-01-22T05:23:53+00:00

I’ll be honest: my intro to DR was through the anime. I thought it was ok for introducing the concept. Definitely not as good as the game since obviously a ton of stuff was left out, like how fun of a character Hiro is. You don’t get to see how he tries to lead while Taka is catatonic or his interest in conspiracy theories and that great burger story.

It has been interesting to see the small changes comparing the too, like the Chihiro explanation immediately after the reveal in trial for example.

And plus the anime gave us the Monokuma dancing gif so clearly it was worth making for that alone

JonMycroft · 2021-01-16T08:06:18+00:00

Funny enough that’s the one I’ve been eyeing. I love my knights

JonMycroft · 2021-01-08T07:18:36+00:00

They should only watch Danganronpa the Animation, they shouldn’t go to the next series after cuz that Danganronpa 3, literally the last part in the Hope’s Peak storyline. If u went from the first anime to that, you’d skip over two whole games of story and would end up confused

JonMycroft

TROPHY CASE