Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Robert Lamb.
Speaker 1: I'm Julie Douglas. Julie, tell me about the time you
Speaker 1: met a ghost hunter. All right, if I must. It's
Speaker 1: a painful memory, but I will tell you. This is
Speaker 1: a ghost hunter you hired. No no, no, no, no
Speaker 1: no no, no hiring of ghost hunters yet. But it
Speaker 1: was someone that I interviewed for a weekly newspaper that
Speaker 1: I worked for. And it was around Halloween, so we're
Speaker 1: getting in on the Halloween action. And this is a
Speaker 1: fairly well known ghost hunter who I shall not name.
Speaker 1: And it was a sort of a It was an
Speaker 1: interesting experience because I was just talking to him about
Speaker 1: his methodology and in the middle of the interview he
Speaker 1: just started laughing and kind of tossing his head around,
Speaker 1: looking up in the ether. And I said, is there
Speaker 1: something wrong? And he said, oh no, he said, I
Speaker 1: just have this one ghost that kind of hangs out
Speaker 1: with me. And you know, he he was just passing
Speaker 1: some gas. Yeah, So I said, okay, And of course,
Speaker 1: you know what this is doing. Inside of my head,
Speaker 1: I'm sting, thinking, oh my god, any credibility is just
Speaker 1: sort of flown out the window. I'm sorry, but I
Speaker 1: just don't know why ghosts would come here from the
Speaker 1: other dimension and then tell us that they were passing gas. Wells, yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like he. I mean that conversation took like
Speaker 1: two successive dives, like like the second that your your
Speaker 1: interview suddenly involves a third person from the spirit realm,
Speaker 1: and then when when it's revealed that that that said
Speaker 1: spirit has some sort of a a gas problem as well,
Speaker 1: then yeah, a flatulent disposition. Yeah, yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was problem, but it got worse. I then asked about
Speaker 1: the spirit, of course, and I said, can you describe
Speaker 1: the spirit and he said, well, he's he's a bit
Speaker 1: of a prankster. He's like just Jack from Will and Grace,
Speaker 1: you know number two I guess another red flag. And
Speaker 1: then he went on to try to say that there
Speaker 1: was a spirit around me and she was really sad,
Speaker 1: and he guessed about seven eight different names that didn't
Speaker 1: correlate with any of my UM ancestors. So I have
Speaker 1: to say it was. It was disappointing. It was any
Speaker 1: kind of insulting because he's like, check out my my
Speaker 1: ghost is awesome, he's funny and all you just you
Speaker 1: got some sad ghost hanging around to I know, he
Speaker 1: kept making a point that she held at a maternal sadness,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, what does that mean? I
Speaker 1: don't understand that, But I thought it was interesting just
Speaker 1: in the context of there was a small part of
Speaker 1: me that was like, you know, hey, what if this
Speaker 1: guy really did have an in line with a ghost?
Speaker 1: How cool would that be? You know? And it could?
Speaker 1: You know. Part of me was like, yeah, please tell
Speaker 1: me something. Let this farting goes piece, you know, give
Speaker 1: me some sort of information that's useful other than you
Speaker 1: know that he's gassy. Um so. But I mean I
Speaker 1: did think to my self, we all sort of yearned
Speaker 1: for this, for some sort of explanation about what happens
Speaker 1: to us after we die, and we I don't think
Speaker 1: we can never quite divorce ourselves from this notion that
Speaker 1: once we cease to exist as a living human, human
Speaker 1: breathing thing, that you know, we don't somehow come out
Speaker 1: in some other form. I mean, I think that we
Speaker 1: have this wish fulfillment, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least I do. I shouldn't say that everybody does,
Speaker 1: but it's it's definitely ingrained in our culture. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean I remember, like, even like at a young age,
Speaker 1: like there being a point where where, you know, I
Speaker 1: was thinking, it's like, wow, what would it be like
Speaker 1: if it's just like you know, when you when you die.
Speaker 1: It's just that's there's nothing like what would nothing be like?
Speaker 1: You know, And that's just that whole sort of mind
Speaker 1: blowing area of trying to you know, to to realize,
Speaker 1: you know, what that would be like. And then you
Speaker 1: sort of grow bored with that, and you kind of think, well,
Speaker 1: what would it be like if I, you know, became
Speaker 1: a butterfly in the next life, you know, And that's
Speaker 1: that's a little more exciting. So I choose to sort
Speaker 1: of I kind of choose to to to throw all
Speaker 1: my belief at areas that a little more interesting like that,
Speaker 1: I guess. But yeah, yeah, because otherwise we there's nothing
Speaker 1: right zip zero for and we don't have a context
Speaker 1: for zero. So um, but that has not stopped scientists
Speaker 1: throwing their minds at it. No, No, of course, it's
Speaker 1: the human problem, right, And we're all sitting here saying
Speaker 1: we've been we're here where you've been created. We're in
Speaker 1: a universe that's been created or came into existence, is
Speaker 1: probably the better way to say that. So what is
Speaker 1: it all for nothing? Tell us science? Well, first, let's
Speaker 1: back up a little bit and talk about some sort
Speaker 1: of early scientific ramblings, if you will, having to do
Speaker 1: with just the connection between But it basically comes down to,
Speaker 1: like this spark that is who we are, like, does
Speaker 1: it have any connection to anything outside ourselves? Right? That's
Speaker 1: what a lot of it is. Because when you when
Speaker 1: you're talking about a ghost, you're talking about a a
Speaker 1: me that exists outside my body, that exists after my
Speaker 1: body is gone. That there's something in my body, maybe
Speaker 1: in permanent, but there's something permanent about me, right right,
Speaker 1: your consciousness, I suppose. Yeah. So a lot of these uh,
Speaker 1: a lot of the like scientific inquiries even have sort
Speaker 1: of like you know, um, you know, poked at reality
Speaker 1: a little to see if they can find those the
Speaker 1: connecting threads, you know. Yeah. In fact, there's something called
Speaker 1: the law of contagion, which is sort of magical thinking
Speaker 1: that things that have once been in contact with each
Speaker 1: other will continue to act on each other at a
Speaker 1: distance even after physical contact has been severed. And this
Speaker 1: is really um, this is what I was saying. It's
Speaker 1: ingrained in our culture. I mean all sorts of um
Speaker 1: cultures primitive and are our modern uh one. Now, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, we all sit there and we
Speaker 1: have these these thoughts connected to someone, whether or not
Speaker 1: they're alive or dead, and this idea that we're all connected. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course this is magical thinking. So bear with me.
Speaker 1: I mean this and and more primitive culture might translate
Speaker 1: to I have roberts tonil cuttings, and so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put it in a magical spell and use it against
Speaker 1: them because I have something of his. Yeah, it's sympathetic
Speaker 1: magic like some of the oldest, Like it's the whole thing,
Speaker 1: Like I just cut my hair. I better hide this
Speaker 1: stuff because of a sorcerer gets ahold of it. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm totally boned. Yeah, I'm toastman. And so then there's
Speaker 1: this this other idea that UM, that this person, this
Speaker 1: connection could exist well beyond us, even in death. UM.
Speaker 1: And so that law of contagion really helps us to
Speaker 1: understand I think, why we have these notions of what
Speaker 1: happens after death, and why we even have the burial
Speaker 1: rituals that we have with our dead. Now. I mean,
Speaker 1: you'd like to think that we bury people because you know,
Speaker 1: we want to be nice and we'd like to remember them.
Speaker 1: But some people would say that we do it because
Speaker 1: we've got the connection to them, and if we just
Speaker 1: were to throw them over a boat or throw them
Speaker 1: in a ditch, they might come after us. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you see this, uh, this law of contagion in
Speaker 1: like like you know, different like heirlooms that are tied
Speaker 1: to you know, the people that are still living there
Speaker 1: dear you know, or people that have died. You see
Speaker 1: it in the whole you know, the whole phrase like oh,
Speaker 1: I'll never wash this hand again. You know that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like you've had a physical connection with say, you know,
Speaker 1: some minor celebrity that you ran into it a bus stop.
Speaker 1: I don't know how the celebrity will be taking the bush,
Speaker 1: maybe the airport, Uh, you know, at the airport, You're like,
Speaker 1: I'll never washed his hand again, because there's like the
Speaker 1: society that there's a connection has been established, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh, and and therefore the the object of that
Speaker 1: connection must be maintained and honored so that that that
Speaker 1: connection can still be there, right yeah, and the and
Speaker 1: the best in the best world that connection with via talisman,
Speaker 1: and the worst of worlds that would be uh, you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of stink eye against you, right, I guess
Speaker 1: going back to the Toni and clippings. So this is
Speaker 1: definitely ingrained in us um and whether or not we
Speaker 1: realize that we all have been sort of operating, at
Speaker 1: least in the Western world under this context. And so
Speaker 1: if you look back at what we used to think scientifically,
Speaker 1: you can see how when spiritualism came up in the
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, people got really excited about that because they thought, oh, ectoplasm,
Speaker 1: there's all there's all sorts of things that are representative
Speaker 1: of from the beyond um, and this ectoplasm is gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, prove it. And here's this medium and we're
Speaker 1: all going to raise a table. Yeah. And she's totally
Speaker 1: not just pulling out like damp cloths and one yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah is that from spook? Yeah yeah, Mary roach Yeah
Speaker 1: gets into it a lot. Yeah, in some detail that
Speaker 1: you would make you shut her a little bit. Some
Speaker 1: of the antics that they pull. We'll leave it to
Speaker 1: you your imagination. But so you can see science trying
Speaker 1: to trying to grapple with this question. And in fact,
Speaker 1: she even covers someone named Duncan McDougall, McDougal, excuse me,
Speaker 1: his twenty one Grahams theory, Yeah, which is, here's this guy.
Speaker 1: He's trying to substantiate the existence of a material soul
Speaker 1: by weighing a corpse just after it ceases to live.
Speaker 1: And um, you know he does it. He I think
Speaker 1: he does like maybe eight corpses or something. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's like each one it's like this was hardly like pristine,
Speaker 1: like you know, control environment. There's like nobody makes corpse
Speaker 1: weighing scales for for this purpose. First that's the first problem.
Speaker 1: And uh and it's like it was in a barn
Speaker 1: or something, right, I mean it was yeah, yeah, And um,
Speaker 1: and I think that the time of death wasn't always accurate,
Speaker 1: so someone might have expired and then oops, yeah it
Speaker 1: was ten minutes too late. Yeah, it's not like he
Speaker 1: like weighed eight corpses and each one they were like,
Speaker 1: you know, definite measurements of twenty one right, right, So
Speaker 1: maybe one of those I think in marriages research that
Speaker 1: maybe one of those wings was sort of meeting the
Speaker 1: criteria of sort of but he's getting this and it
Speaker 1: was like, hey, this what this body now always twenty
Speaker 1: one grams less and the soul is gone. So therefore
Speaker 1: the soul weighs twenty one grahams and just flew out
Speaker 1: the window. That's right. And here we have evidence of
Speaker 1: the soul. So you can see science and yesteryear reaching
Speaker 1: for against some sort of idea that there's this existence,
Speaker 1: there's this law of contagion extending itself beyond the realm
Speaker 1: that we know. So what do we know for sure? Though? Well,
Speaker 1: one thing we know for sure is the I mean
Speaker 1: as much as we know anything for sure. But the
Speaker 1: first law of thermodynamics, and that's the energy can neither
Speaker 1: be created or destroyed. And and uh and and this
Speaker 1: is another thing that Mary Rock goes into a little
Speaker 1: bit in the book, and that's that if energy, energy
Speaker 1: can can neither be created nor destroyed, well you can
Speaker 1: if you really get some fine measurements, you can measure
Speaker 1: the the energy of consciousness of thought. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: and where does it go? Is it? Can it just
Speaker 1: turn off? Or does it go somewhere? Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: fact that we that matter still how it contains energy, right,
Speaker 1: energies matter, and I mean that just doesn't change after
Speaker 1: you die as far as we know, right, we can't
Speaker 1: necessarily track it. We don't know where it goes, and
Speaker 1: that becomes the grand problem or the mysterium tremendum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and unlike the people are looking at this, they're not
Speaker 1: all saying like, oh, this definitely means that this tiny
Speaker 1: little this tiny little bit of energy that was human
Speaker 1: consciousness or or just the thoughts rambling around in the
Speaker 1: you know, the in the the head meat up there
Speaker 1: that it you know, shot up to heaven or we know,
Speaker 1: went to the next life or jumped into a mouse
Speaker 1: that was hanging out in the hallway. You know, it
Speaker 1: might just be you know, diffusing into the you know,
Speaker 1: the surrounding area or something of that nature. But still
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think, uh, you know about it applying
Speaker 1: the law of thermodynamics, the first law thermodynamics um to
Speaker 1: you know, thoughts, and think, well that it can't end.
Speaker 1: It has to go somewhere. That energy goes somewhere, you know.
Speaker 1: So even if it's not a you know, a survival
Speaker 1: of me or a survival of my thoughts, it's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting to think of like the survival of that
Speaker 1: energy in the same way that like the body that
Speaker 1: you leave behind. I mean that if that is energy,
Speaker 1: and you know, if it's planted in a garden, that
Speaker 1: energy is going to transfer onto other organisms, right. Or
Speaker 1: if you happen to leave your body to science and
Speaker 1: you end up in a body farm right rotting away
Speaker 1: for for for for data, um, then yeah, then you're well,
Speaker 1: I guess it's the same thing. You're still going to
Speaker 1: have matter transferred over to a little shred of grass
Speaker 1: or to another cadaver. Yeah. Yeah, Which it's kind of
Speaker 1: actually a lovely thing when you think about, or at
Speaker 1: least in my mind, is that you're dispersing your manner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's I like to think like when
Speaker 1: I go to the grocery store. I like to think
Speaker 1: of it, um, especially them being really like judgmental about
Speaker 1: what other people are putting into their shopping I like
Speaker 1: that I do that, Yeah, but I also try and
Speaker 1: be judgmental about what what we're putting in our shopping cart.
Speaker 1: And I think of I tend to think that like
Speaker 1: I am going to build a new body out of
Speaker 1: the things I buy at the store today. So I
Speaker 1: want to build things that are not disgusting. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like like, oh, I'm going to build a new
Speaker 1: body out of some you know, some nice vegetables and
Speaker 1: not cheetos and not cheetos and tombstone pizzas, you know,
Speaker 1: tombstone Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of like I've built
Speaker 1: my body out of these things this, out of these
Speaker 1: you know, stored energy items, and now I'm done with
Speaker 1: the body. So the body is going to become energy again.
Speaker 1: So it's you know, it's kind of you know, you're
Speaker 1: just borrowing everything, wow, from body farms to tombstone pizza. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right. So I think that when you think of
Speaker 1: it this way, then you you understand matter that it's
Speaker 1: not just a static thing. Right, So we obviously we
Speaker 1: have no idea where it goes what it does when
Speaker 1: you die, but plausibly it could disperse itself um and
Speaker 1: then you have the problem of quantum physics, or you
Speaker 1: could some would say you could have the solution with
Speaker 1: quantum physics and multiverse. So with quantum physics, there's a
Speaker 1: non nonlinear dimension of life, assuming that some of the
Speaker 1: tenets of quantum physics are applicable and correct. Namely, the
Speaker 1: observations can't be predicted absolutely. Okay, Okay, so I there's
Speaker 1: the road number two. So what we're saying is that
Speaker 1: there may be a range of possible observations with different
Speaker 1: probability in an infinite number of universes where time and
Speaker 1: events aren't behaving in the way that we experience them
Speaker 1: or the way that we expect them to behave, which
Speaker 1: is that another big question mark? Yeah, Well, that that's
Speaker 1: the thing I think a lot of people begin to
Speaker 1: sort of shut off when you when when when quantum
Speaker 1: physics come up, and especially when like the idea of
Speaker 1: of multiple universes come up, because it's you can almost
Speaker 1: explain anything with quantum physics if you really want to,
Speaker 1: and and it's actually it takes off a lot of
Speaker 1: scientists out there too. We were both looking at sources
Speaker 1: from this guy, John Horgan, and he discounted a lot
Speaker 1: of some of the things we're talking about. When when
Speaker 1: quantum is getting get involved as a quote scientific theology,
Speaker 1: which it's kind of like we talked about in the
Speaker 1: Tropic Principle Um podcast, is that is that you kind
Speaker 1: of end up building some of the same like trying
Speaker 1: to answer unanswerable things, except instead of throwing like folk
Speaker 1: tale at it, and uh, you know, in in in
Speaker 1: religion or or even you know, necessary or even philosophy,
Speaker 1: you're you're throwing like scientific ideas and trying to build
Speaker 1: something that can't really be proven. Man. And I guess
Speaker 1: the problem with quantum physics is because h is that
Speaker 1: it's sort of used as a placeholder sometimes. She said,
Speaker 1: So it's like, well, okay, you'd have to have this condition,
Speaker 1: this condition, this condition, and then the gel of all
Speaker 1: this is is quantum physics. So which and I'm that's
Speaker 1: not to say that you can't prove out some things
Speaker 1: in quantum physics. You can obviously. Well, well, one interesting
Speaker 1: thing is the idea of quantum entanglement, and that has
Speaker 1: actually been observed. University of Geneva and Switzerland did that
Speaker 1: earlier this year, I believe, at least the published earlier
Speaker 1: this year. Okay, is this what Einstein called spooky matter
Speaker 1: at a distance? Uh? Yeah, I believe. So, Like basically
Speaker 1: it comes down to um. You have photons, tiny, you know,
Speaker 1: little little particles, photons whose quantum properties are so intimdently
Speaker 1: linked that one always knows what the other knows what
Speaker 1: the other one is doing. They don't actually they're not conscious.
Speaker 1: But but the idea is that when one one photons
Speaker 1: quantum state is measured, the other photon changes. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting you know, it kind of lines
Speaker 1: up with a whole law of contation we're talking about,
Speaker 1: all right, shape shifting. Yeah, And so that's an example
Speaker 1: of something where they can say, hey, we've actually have
Speaker 1: served this um you know, we we can you can
Speaker 1: actually observe it with the human eye under correct um
Speaker 1: you know conditions, right, But but not everything. There's a
Speaker 1: whole lot of other stuff in quantum physics, especially if
Speaker 1: you use quantum physics to build some sort of out
Speaker 1: their theories. That is, it's a lot harder to to
Speaker 1: build a case for Okay. So that's what we're saying
Speaker 1: is that, yes, there are some ways that you can
Speaker 1: apply it, but wholesale and not necessarily. But it's an
Speaker 1: intriguing question, right because we just don't know the answers
Speaker 1: to this. So that brings me to, okay, that the
Speaker 1: whole thing about having a parallel universe that makes me
Speaker 1: think about near death experiences and this sort of m
Speaker 1: duplicity of self or not even duplicity, but this idea
Speaker 1: of yourself being outside of yourself. Right, And if for
Speaker 1: anybody who ever watched Unsolved Mysteries as a as a child, um,
Speaker 1: this is like you know, the basic thing where it's
Speaker 1: like the persons on the operating table or they're in
Speaker 1: the emergency room and they have that sensation where they're
Speaker 1: they're they're rising up from the table and then they're
Speaker 1: looking down at themselves on the operating table. Do they
Speaker 1: also see the tunnel and the light and yes, people
Speaker 1: start coming to get them from from the afterlife. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That maybe the same episode or multiple I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's like Unsolved Mystery started out being about like crimes
Speaker 1: and then like later it was just all like aliens
Speaker 1: and and lost time and other world experiences. Scared me
Speaker 1: a lot as a child. It definitely shaped you. Yes,
Speaker 1: hence the preoccupation with our topic today. Yes, so what
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting and this is uh. This is
Speaker 1: from a article by Josh Clark about has science explained
Speaker 1: life after death? He talks about r m intrusion rem intrusion,
Speaker 1: which um is this conclusion that there is a disorder
Speaker 1: in which a person's mind can wake up before the
Speaker 1: body does, and hallucinations occur during that time, including the
Speaker 1: feeling like you're detached from your body. And so the
Speaker 1: thought is that these intrusions are triggered by traumatic events
Speaker 1: like cardiac arrest, and it occurs in the brainstem, where
Speaker 1: this intrusion can still occur even though your higher brain
Speaker 1: may be occupied or may even be shutting down. And
Speaker 1: so I think this is interesting is that it came
Speaker 1: out of a study from the University of Kentucky and
Speaker 1: they're basically saying, here, we've got it. We've got a
Speaker 1: solution to this whole near death experience. It may not
Speaker 1: just be you, you know, traveling outside of your body
Speaker 1: astually because you know you've experienced or you you are
Speaker 1: about to experience death. So you know, we we can
Speaker 1: kind of poke holes in that this presentation is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Intel sponsors of Tomorrow, and we know
Speaker 1: it's so important to scientists that they're actually uh conducting
Speaker 1: even more studies and something that just came out in
Speaker 1: the Street Journal or pretty recently did oh this is
Speaker 1: the one with the pictures, right, yeah, yeah, So you
Speaker 1: know about this. Tell me a little bit more. Well,
Speaker 1: the idea is basically, like I said, as we've all
Speaker 1: seen unsolved mysteries the Purse or any number of paranormal
Speaker 1: um you know, documentary type shows. The ideas of the
Speaker 1: person is raising up off the table and they're seeing
Speaker 1: themselves from above. So what if you were to you know,
Speaker 1: put a little picture, a little photograph, or or it's
Speaker 1: like even you could even do it with like a
Speaker 1: like a playing card, like is this your card, sir?
Speaker 1: You know, lay it next to the person's head, and
Speaker 1: then after they've had the the out of body experience,
Speaker 1: say what card did you see next to your head
Speaker 1: laying on the table. And if they're like, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? I didn't see a card, then you
Speaker 1: would know that nothing happened, or if they couldn't guess
Speaker 1: the correct card. Okay, So these are researchers who have
Speaker 1: suspended pictures face up from the ceiling in in emergency
Speaker 1: care areas to test whether or not patients who are
Speaker 1: brought back to life after cardiac arrest are able to
Speaker 1: see these pictures or these photos which okay, so which
Speaker 1: automatically I start to think, like what sort of pictures
Speaker 1: are they even using, like you said, it could be
Speaker 1: a playing card. I mean, the dark side of me
Speaker 1: wants to think that there are pictures of clowns just
Speaker 1: to scare them. I was picturing horses for some reason, horses,
Speaker 1: but maybe like kind of like like you know, snarling horses.
Speaker 1: Certain they don't really snarl, but you know where there
Speaker 1: was dripping, Yeah, where their lips pull back and they're
Speaker 1: all like teeth for horsemen of the apocalypse ish yeah, okay, alright,
Speaker 1: so we both have like these really snugly ideas of
Speaker 1: what the researchers should put in, what it needs to
Speaker 1: be memorable, Like you don't want it to be like
Speaker 1: there's a picture of some kid. I guess I thought
Speaker 1: one of the surgeons just takes that out when he's
Speaker 1: working to inspire it. Well, see, that's why I thought
Speaker 1: the clowns would be really funny, because if you're having
Speaker 1: out of body experiencing, you indeed can't see the photos.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's the clowns. Yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: which actually that's it's kind of awful. It's sort of mean, Well,
Speaker 1: unless they really love clowns, and it would be like
Speaker 1: what am I? I should go back to my body.
Speaker 1: They are clowns in this life where I'm going there,
Speaker 1: there may be no clowns, or there may be lots
Speaker 1: of clowns. It depends on your your definitions of the
Speaker 1: afterlife goodness the clown I have to say, that's it's
Speaker 1: not my it's not my idea of a perfect afterlife.
Speaker 1: I think, isn't it one of the afterlives in Buddhism,
Speaker 1: Like there's a clowns. Yes, yes, yes, you you reach
Speaker 1: clown status. I think. Yeah. But uh, what I think
Speaker 1: is really cool about the study is that we should
Speaker 1: find out what they've learned round March April or so.
Speaker 1: That should be publishing, So should be fascinating. Okay, So
Speaker 1: Susan Blackmore's who makes it her job to study this stuff.
Speaker 1: She basically has said that she thinks that near death
Speaker 1: experience is a particularly dramatic consequence of our cognitive tendency
Speaker 1: to construct models of ourselves as though observed from the outside. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is like I'm standing at the train station
Speaker 1: waiting on the train and I can't help but imagine
Speaker 1: what other people are seeing exactly. Yeah, Okay, so it's
Speaker 1: not just me that right, no, no, no, right, like
Speaker 1: you have that you know in your database, you've you've
Speaker 1: got all these images built up, so you can obviously
Speaker 1: imagine yourself, um looking at yourself and that's that. This
Speaker 1: is just really the consequence of that, so that near
Speaker 1: death experience isn't necessarily something that people are actually experiencing.
Speaker 1: And to boot, there's something called ketamine, which is a
Speaker 1: drug that can induce the same sort of sensations that
Speaker 1: you get. So another piece of evidence to sit there
Speaker 1: and say, Okay, a near death experience really interesting, but
Speaker 1: it may not be what we think it is in
Speaker 1: terms of linking uh, the afterlife to our own experiences
Speaker 1: here in north because they can they can produce similar
Speaker 1: effects with a drug artificially. Yeah, exactly right, So which
Speaker 1: begs the question can our consciousness ext this apart from
Speaker 1: the brain? Yeah? This is uh, this is one that
Speaker 1: I that gets a lot of play just you know
Speaker 1: throughout like science fiction and fantasy. I think like the
Speaker 1: idea of digitized consciousness, as you know, comes up a lot,
Speaker 1: the idea that that I can like maybe make a
Speaker 1: like a digital copy of my brain and it could
Speaker 1: it exists somewhere and think but it's it gets really
Speaker 1: complicated when you when you start wondering about that. For starters,
Speaker 1: we're not really sure. We're have a really hard time
Speaker 1: to finding consciousness anyway. So the idea of like can
Speaker 1: we replicate something that we don't even we don't even
Speaker 1: really know what it is, it's it gets kind of difficult,
Speaker 1: Like I do you have to like create a machine
Speaker 1: that has all these pieces and then fools itself into
Speaker 1: thinking that it has free will, and then just you know,
Speaker 1: it's just it gets really really muddy, really fast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I can't think about it um from any perspective
Speaker 1: other than the biological structures. So you've got your your
Speaker 1: nerve of cells, and you've got your firing of neurons,
Speaker 1: and you've got your synaptic nectivity. So I can't imagine
Speaker 1: that in some sort of disembodied state, right, and then
Speaker 1: our our heads too, I mean, and it's it's it's
Speaker 1: easy to, in a very idealistic way, say say I
Speaker 1: want you know, I want me, you know, my mind
Speaker 1: to you know, exist in a machine somewhere, But then
Speaker 1: you start thinking like all the different, weird and often
Speaker 1: unpleasant things that make our mind what it is. And again,
Speaker 1: how they're all tied to biology and uh and and
Speaker 1: and like the whole like sort of like you're throwing
Speaker 1: the ego in there too, and you have all these
Speaker 1: sort of these weird forces kind of pulling at each other,
Speaker 1: and it's like, why would you even want to replicate that?
Speaker 1: Why not build something better? You know? Yeah? I agree,
Speaker 1: And and you say the ego, and it makes me
Speaker 1: think about Buddhism and and and all comes razor um
Speaker 1: and Buddhism just says, well, self is an illusion, so
Speaker 1: why do you think it could replicate itself outside of
Speaker 1: self essentially? Or I'm saying that actually Buddhists and saying that,
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of times what we think
Speaker 1: of another idea that you encounter in and I think
Speaker 1: some in Buddhism, but also a lot of like New
Speaker 1: Age kind of stuff where people talk about like what
Speaker 1: we think of as self isn't really self. It's like
Speaker 1: there's us, and then there's this kind of like fake
Speaker 1: you that you kind of create that's kind of mashed
Speaker 1: together out of ego and everything. It's kind of lumped
Speaker 1: in there as well. So and again you're kind of
Speaker 1: so you're kind of like lying to yourself constantly about
Speaker 1: who you are and like marching around this little ego
Speaker 1: puppet in your head. Yeah, and if you apply the
Speaker 1: Marxist theory to that, then you're just a product that's
Speaker 1: been signified. I know it's not even you didn't really
Speaker 1: who cares about your consciousness? Go make us something? But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that that people haven't tried to actually
Speaker 1: look into our consciousness existing outside of our brain. You've
Speaker 1: got something called ORC theory, which is orchestrated objective reduction.
Speaker 1: So it's O r C A yes, or I guess
Speaker 1: you could say ORCH like work too. But you've got
Speaker 1: sir Roger Penrose and Stuart hammer Off and they're basically
Speaker 1: saying that consciousness is a sequence of quantum computations inside
Speaker 1: brain neurons, and the idea is that each neuron isn't
Speaker 1: just flipping a switch, but actually a complex computer of
Speaker 1: its own. I'm not going to pretend to be uninterestand
Speaker 1: I mean, my brain is hanging on a thread with
Speaker 1: this one. But I did find this really cool website
Speaker 1: called edge dot org and it's basically a bunch of
Speaker 1: missive missives between scientists theorists, and they're all batting about
Speaker 1: their own ideas and they're taking heat and they're giving
Speaker 1: it back. And I dig that so um with Stuart
Speaker 1: hammer offf he actually posted something as a rebuttal to
Speaker 1: Lee Smullen and Stuart Kaufman and he about ORC. He
Speaker 1: has said, the two main points I want to make
Speaker 1: is the flow of time is a future feature of
Speaker 1: cons aousness, and outside of consciousness, there may not be
Speaker 1: a flow of time. Okay, consciousness provides the clock, alright, Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's that's interesting. And then the second thing is
Speaker 1: that the or OR model suggests consciousness is a sequence
Speaker 1: of self organizing rearrangements of space time geometry at the
Speaker 1: level of quantum spin networks. Well, that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: That's what I was thinking. I was just thinking that
Speaker 1: the other day. You know. No, but that's that's uh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really complicated. Yeah yeah. So I just put that
Speaker 1: out there because people are thinking about this and they're
Speaker 1: writing down their thoughts about it, about the quantum spin networks.
Speaker 1: And that made me go to Freeman Dyson, who is
Speaker 1: a physicist and he was contributed to all different fields.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he seems to have had his hands and
Speaker 1: just about everything I mean from you from dreaming up
Speaker 1: things like the Dyson's sphere to to you know, his
Speaker 1: involvement with the with Theryan project. If the list goes on,
Speaker 1: he's amazing, amazing guy. Yeah, and he's really an optimist
Speaker 1: because he feels like the Earth first of all, I
Speaker 1: should say, rather the universe is going to be expanding
Speaker 1: at a pretty steady rate. So he's not someone who
Speaker 1: thinks that, you know, it's all going to end very soon.
Speaker 1: That's that's the first deal with him. So he likes
Speaker 1: to imagine us as um as beings who can adjust
Speaker 1: to that and who can actually start to conserve energy.
Speaker 1: And in an article and with Slate he was actually asked,
Speaker 1: you know, what could our descendants possibly look like a
Speaker 1: trillion years from now, when the stars have disappeared and
Speaker 1: the universe is dark and freezing and so diffuse, that
Speaker 1: is practically empty. And ever the optimist, he finds like
Speaker 1: a like a bright way of looking at this, at
Speaker 1: our existence in this universe of death. Yes, yes, he says,
Speaker 1: the most plausible answer is that conscious life will take
Speaker 1: the form of interstellar dust clouds. So for him, consciousness
Speaker 1: is just a bunch of charged particles hanging out in
Speaker 1: a dust cloud, and he actually thinks that there's that
Speaker 1: our consciousness is will merge into one great mind and
Speaker 1: actually be able to transcend this locality of where we
Speaker 1: are now. That's interesting. That kind of flows back into
Speaker 1: some of the anthropic principle theories that were being thrown around,
Speaker 1: you know, about the the idea that once once consciousness
Speaker 1: comes into being, it can't really be stopped and will
Speaker 1: eventually become like Godlike, Oh, that's right. Is that the
Speaker 1: final Anthropic's final anthropic? Yeah? Yeah, And that's that was
Speaker 1: one that always kind of through me because I was thinking, well,
Speaker 1: was the matrix? What are you talking about? Is this
Speaker 1: our intelligence is being construed as a computer program. But
Speaker 1: basically he's thinking that will become these organisms that are
Speaker 1: free floating and and just hanging out as clouds. Which
Speaker 1: but that that would be a situation where you would
Speaker 1: have consciousness existing without a physical body in a way,
Speaker 1: kind of a ghost. I guess if you want to
Speaker 1: go there, ghost clouds, ghost clouds. Yeah, I like it,
Speaker 1: um chilling years from now check it out? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: can can has science explained life after death? No? Not really? Sorry,
Speaker 1: If you were looking for a definite answer on that,
Speaker 1: then we're not gonna be able to deliver it at
Speaker 1: this time. But if you're interested about whether or not
Speaker 1: scientists has uh debunked some myths about ghosts, all the
Speaker 1: information is available. So if you know about e v
Speaker 1: P the voice recordings, yeah, voices and all that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jonathan and Chris a tech stuff did a really cool
Speaker 1: podcast on ghostbusting technology. Yeah, and they go into all
Speaker 1: of this. So that's that's definitely worth checking out. Yeh ectoplasm,
Speaker 1: ray guns or and such. And of course be sure
Speaker 1: to check out Jeff Clark's article Has Science Explained Life
Speaker 1: After Death? Which you know, just a two pager, but
Speaker 1: Josh covers a some of the ground that we we
Speaker 1: cover in this and does it in a nice concise manner.
Speaker 1: To find Josh in articles. Yes, I think that's a
Speaker 1: wrap for science in the Afterlife? All right, check us
Speaker 1: out next week. And if you haven't already read Josh
Speaker 1: Clark's article Has Science Explained Life after Death? Or? Do
Speaker 1: parallel universes really exist? Why don't you take a look
Speaker 1: see at them at how stuff works dot com. The
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot Com I phone app is coming soon.
Speaker 1: Get access to our content in a new way. Articles, videos,
Speaker 1: and more all on the go. Check out the latest
Speaker 1: podcast and blog post, and see what we're saying on
Speaker 1: Facebook and Twitter. Coming soon to iTunes,