The piece was deeply thought-provoking, but I struggled to get through it sensing how much AI was used to write it.
I’ve been drafting a manuscript for a novel lately, trying to see how well llms can help.
I recognize this prose immediately as OpenAI gpt 5.
It loves to describe things “hum” that don’t usually hum, like the author wrote in the beginning. Plenty more descriptions match the cadence and rhythm and word choices I’ve seen writing my manuscript.
I feel like there’s a meta discussion the author was prompting here about consciousness.
Reading the writing of a real human feels more intimate. Reading the auto-tune version of writing makes me feel noticeably less connected to the reader. I know the author still input something to get this output. But there’s something blocking a deeper connection when I just “know” I’m not reading the author’s words.
Edit: llamas > llms
p2detar
3 minutes ago
[ - ]
[delayed]
chis
3 hours ago
[ - ]
I felt the exact same, I can't believe nobody else has commented on it. It feels so disrespectful to such a powerful story to tell it in this way. I mean there's a really interesting core but I just wish I could read the first draft before LLMs overwrote it to death.
"Survivor’s euphoria.” A clinical term, woefully inadequate. It wasn’t just euphoria. It was revelation."
gyomu
2 hours ago
[ - ]
Yeah the “No _____. No _____. Just the ______.” is such a dead ringer for AI writing these days that I just ignore any writing that features it.
If you don’t care about your craft as a writer to the extent that you can’t even realize how straight-out-of-a-LLM your writing sounds, I’m not going to care about it either.
fragmede
22 minutes ago
[ - ]
How do you draw the conclusion that the writer doesn't care about their craft though? If someone uses an emdash, but spent three hours and a ton of effort on a three paragraph comment and some of that time was spent running it through ChatGPT to hone their point so it comes across better,
does that invalidate the point they're trying to make? Should we start documenting how long it took to write something, regardless of if an LLM was used in some capacity to help write something instead?
ChaitanyaSai
46 minutes ago
[ - ]
Yup, it's the short sentence cadence.
"And yet, hours before surgery, with death still in the room, I didn’t feel fear. I felt something quieter. Stranger. I felt connected. To her eyes. To my breath. To the weight of my feet against the floor. To the wind brushing the window."
The usage of these short sentences (which, people do use, but sparingly) is a good marker. My hunch is this is because of how they call attention to themselves and are rewarded by human RLHF participants. I don't know if incentives including spending time on essays like this but if they don't and the rater is trying to do a speed-read, these stand out.
One along those lines: "Not just that we think. But that we feel. That we can marvel. That we can sit in silence across from someone we love and feel time slow down and become something."
te_chris
29 minutes ago
[ - ]
Like the rlhf is all Hemingway bros (and I love Hemingway)
AdieuToLogic
2 hours ago
[ - ]
> The piece was deeply thought-provoking, but I struggled to get through it sensing how much AI was used to write it.
> I’ve been drafting a manuscript for a novel lately, trying to see how well llms can help.
> I recognize this prose immediately as OpenAI gpt 5.
Is it possible you are experiencing confirmation bias[0]?
In other words, by your own admission, you have been "trying to see how well llms can help" as it pertains to writing. With that degree of LLM intimacy, is it possible "the cadence and rhythm and word choices I’ve seen writing my manuscript" is a pattern you are predisposed to identify in other works?
That wouldn’t be confirmation bias, just pattern recognition.
If I teach English as a foreign language, am familiar with the kind of mistakes non native speakers make when writing in English, and can easily identify texts written by non native speakers - that’s not confirmation bias.
AdieuToLogic
33 minutes ago
[ - ]
> If I teach English as a foreign language, am familiar with the kind of mistakes non native speakers make when writing in English, and can easily identify texts written by non native speakers - that’s not confirmation bias.
And if you immersed yourself in the writings of non-native English speakers for a significant amount of time, then a paper written by a native English speaker was presented without you knowing who the author was, would you look for the same kind of mistakes in it that you have been finding?
gyomu
4 minutes ago
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I wouldn’t look for anything. As I’m reading a text, something in my brain would immediately go “this is probably written by a non native speaker” when coming across certain awkward turns of phrase.
adithyassekhar
31 minutes ago
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I wonder how it would affect those us with english as their second language. I initially learned mine through movies and tv shows from the west. Later hanging around in various forums.
That era is definitely over.
andhuman
2 hours ago
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When I got to the third hum, I got suspicious, which is sad for this kind of beautiful experience.
golem14
1 hour ago
[ - ]
To whom do I hum, to whom?
zozbot234
3 hours ago
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Is it really OpenAI/ChatGPT, or just the kind of writing ChatGPT was trained to replicate?
moffkalast
3 hours ago
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Impossible to say, a few people really do write like that and their writing gets flagged by those detection systems all the time, but I think we all know which option is far more likely.
EnPissant
2 hours ago
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I don't know if the tide has shifted on this site, but I was scolded by dang some months ago for pointing out something was obviously GPT-written. I guess that's against the rules.
rixed
4 hours ago
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"There is a kind of consciousness that lives not in thought but in presence."
Yes, and I believe the strong association we often make between the most advanced cognitive functions and consciousness are misleading us into believing that consciousness is somehow the result of those functions, while I suspect we (conscious selves) are just witnessing those functions like we are witnessing anything, "from the outside". It's of course the most amazing part of the show, but should not be confused for it. Consciousness is not made of thinking but of observing, we just spend a lot of time observing how we think.
zozbot234
3 hours ago
[ - ]
There's no such thing as an individual conscious self that persists over time - it is always a misconception and an illusion. Consciousness is just something that living beings do, not something that they "are". It's an impersonal phenomenon (as far as it goes - there's of course plenty of things, mental states, thoughts etc. that are genuinely personal about our individual lives!) not a state of being.
AdieuToLogic
1 hour ago
[ - ]
> There's no such thing as an individual conscious self that persists over time - it is always a misconception and an illusion.
If individual consciousness does not persist over time, how does one explain existence from one day to the next? Or learning from one situation to the next?
And how is consciousness "a misconception and an illusion?"
> Consciousness is just something that living beings do, not something that they "are".
This implies a lack of awareness of self, which is fundamental to the definition of consciousness. And if a being is aware of itself, then they "are".
> It's an impersonal phenomenon ... not a state of being.
If individual consciousness does not qualify as "a state of being", then whatever could?
zozbot234
1 hour ago
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> If individual consciousness does not persist over time, how does one explain existence from one day to the next? Or learning from one situation to the next?
That's easy: consciousness piggybacks on memory, which is what really creates persistence over time. But an amnesiac can be conscious in the moment and not "learn from one situation to the next". Plenty of philosophers (including Western philosophers such as David Hume) have looked into this, and the account of individual persisting consciousness as a kind of misconception or illusion (or at least, a very rough "folk" theory of personal identity) is one that elegantly explains the data. That's before you get into the kind of deep inquiry into phenomenology that Eastern meditation practitioners would be deeply familiar with.
AdieuToLogic
17 minutes ago
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>> If individual consciousness does not persist over time, how does one explain existence from one day to the next? Or learning from one situation to the next?
> That's easy: consciousness piggybacks on memory, which is what really creates persistence over time.
One could just as easily say memory is a component of consciousness, be it short or long term versions.
> But an amnesiac can be conscious in the moment and not "learn from one situation to the next".
Amnesia is not the inability to "learn from one situation to the next." It is instead a condition affecting the ability of memory recall. Furthermore, I am unaware of any credible research claiming there exists amnesia such that all memory is blocked.
It is apparent to me you have a firm belief in your position regarding consciousness. I disagree with this position while respecting your right to have it.
rixed
2 hours ago
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I share the feeling about it being impersonal (I've started to doubt its individuality as well). I like to think of consciousness as "the universe observing itself", but that sounds a bit too new-agey.
kranner
5 hours ago
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I'd shared this article last week with the meditation group I'm part of, describing the author's state of mind on the eve of surgery as a state of samadhi. It's a great description of the state I end up in during almost every meditation session (practicing in the 'open awareness' style) and sometimes also in the middle of the day, unprompted.
I'd shared it with the group because it was interesting that the author had spontaneously landed in the state due to catastrophic circumstances, but now reading it a second time I recall this had also happened to me years ago, on the sudden death of a close family member. I consider myself lucky to be able to access it outside circumstances of personal tragedy or medical emergency. It's a great reason to learn to meditate; unfortunately you can't give people a quick preview of it or a lot more people would take meditation more seriously.
judge123
3 hours ago
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Powerful story. But let's be real: after the "survivor's euphoria" fades, how do you actually keep that level of consciousness? I feel like the daily grind would inevitably pull me back to my old self. Has anyone here had a life-changing moment and actually managed to stay changed?
trinsic2
3 hours ago
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Its a constant practice, like anything. Part of you is changed forever when you go through something like this, the awareness part mostley, you can never go back to normality even when something like that wears off.
I know from experience because I survived a brain hemorrhage. I had a state where I experienced the world differently for many years. I still do. Something cracked open in me and it has stayed that way, other aspects of my physiology are returning to a baseline state, like my nervous system changes which damped my fear responses.
siavosh
3 hours ago
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Different traditions have been systematically iterating on techniques to do exactly this for thousands of years.
AdieuToLogic
3 hours ago
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> Has anyone here had a life-changing moment and actually managed to stay changed?
A life-changing moment changes one's life by definition. Each time a person experiences one, they are changed in a way where who they were before they can remember, perhaps even look fondly upon, but know they are not that person anymore.
> Powerful story. But let's be real: after the "survivor's euphoria" fades, how do you actually keep that level of consciousness?
By living in the moment and remembering how you got there.
madaxe_again
39 minutes ago
[ - ]
You typically don’t go back to the daily grind, as this kind of event often substantially changes your priorities.
I speak for myself, although I know I am not alone in my trajectory. About a decade ago I was ill enough for long enough with an uncertain enough prognosis that I was getting my affairs in order. At the same time a close friend died of an agressivo cancer, aged 32.
I decided to choose quality over quantity. Fuck my business, fuck my career, fuck stupid status games and absolutely fuck climbing the infinite pile of skulls.
Sold up. Put everything on 00 and gave the wheel a spin.
It’s been almost a decade. I still live in the woods, start my days with a coffee and birdsong and “ein heiliges ‘ja!’”, still have zero temptation to return to my life before.
nativeit
36 minutes ago
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I think one of the big bummers about this kind of thing is that it’s not really something that could be planned or chosen for. We tend to change slowly and subconsciously through the things we prioritize and routinely practice, our brains and bodies adapt to our “normal”.
The times we tend to adopt changes quickly and consciously are most often with circumstance and external pressures, and the shortcomings implicit with such rapid adaptations can manifest as neuroses/complexes. In traumatic scenarios this might be something like PTSD, but it isn’t necessarily all downsides, either. People taking therapeutic amounts of MDMA or psilocybin (as in, occasionally, not “micro dosing” or whatever Elon Musk seems to be doing) might experience a durable improvement in subjective happiness and optimism.
Disclaimer: this is my own intuitive and wholly unqualified understanding of this, which was arrived at via discussions with behavioral therapists, but I’m an IT consultant, wtf do I really know about it?
I will say that I’ve found mindful meditation highly effective for treating mild to moderate PTSD. It isn’t fast to get started, but after a few weeks of training, you can deploy your own chemical Xanax directly within your own brain using breathing patterns. It really worked for me. I used the app “Headspace” to start out.
cocire
5 hours ago
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https://imgur.com/a/vsRq0a9 I had some occipital lobe taken out in 2010 when I was 20 years old, to try to treat epilepsy!
sitkack
3 hours ago
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Wow, that looks drastic?
How much did it help? Did you notice a change in your personality? How long did it take to recover? Did you lose vision in one eye?
cocire
3 hours ago
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They really only took a tiny piece of brain out, I guess. They didn't show me, sadly. :(
It was all occipital lobe so vision would have been the only thing affected. I had terrible vision in the lower-left quadrant of both of my eyes anyways, based on a medical field-of-vision test, along with my own tendency to bump into people and things on my left side (still the case).
Based on many electroencephalographs (EEGs), they decided my epileptic seizures stemmed from the lower right occipital lobe of my brain. It is kind of neat proof to me that the opposite side of your brain has effects on the other side of your body; right occipital lobe affecting left visual field.
So, they removed some brain, which actually did not affect my epilepsy at all, positively or negatively. I went into the hospital, got surgery, and was out maybe a week later - when that photo was taken. I had to go back a week or two later to have the staples taken out.
My lower left peripheral vision is worse than it used to be. I have about eight visual seizures that each last maybe a minute or two per day, but I can carry on a conversation and nobody even knows. I take seven pills every morning, and another four each night. I do not have a drivers license, car, or really ever plan to drive again, but that is kind of why I moved to live in a city where I can walk, take public transit, and get deliveries quickly/reliably.
On the nerd side, I track my seizures with my own homemade Python Django (w/ REST Framework) application, PostgreSQL, and an Apple Shortcut, usually from my iPhone or watch. Datasette and Highcharts make visualizing all my seizures tracked since December 2021 pretty cool.
interloxia
14 minutes ago
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Do you also track /check your field of view?
A long time ago I made a simple tool to check my father's visual field changes due to cancer. At first he found it interesting to track his condition. Unfortunately it accurately tracked his condition and he, in my option wisely, stoped using it.
All the best managing and tracking
ggm
4 hours ago
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I learned a new term: Survivor's Euphoria. Only having had relatively minor procedures, I have only had relatively minor instances. But I have had a feeling of "I came back" which I have solely after waking up from anasthaesia. As if the interrupted mental processes carry some flow state forward, which I re-attach to.
There's a longer baseline term which might go with this: Survivor's Depression. I have found after successful surgery, diagnostics, any kind of procedure after the initial elation, I have a very strong down-mood. It's not unlike coming back from holiday and feeling exhausted.
modeless
4 hours ago
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These sound like anaesthetic side effects.
AdieuToLogic
3 hours ago
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>> But I have had a feeling of "I came back" which I have solely after waking up from anasthaesia.
> These sound like anaesthetic side effects.
General anesthesia[0] used in surgeries are effectively artificially induced comas. The pre-op discussion with the anesthesiologist includes them describing this and that there is a very real risk that you will die from its usage.
Regaining consciousness after having it applied most certainly invokes a feeling of "I came back" and has nothing to do with side effects.
Source: I have had two general anesthesia[0] and one epidural[1] surgeries.
OK but you haven't provided any evidence, just a personal anecdote. I hope you understand that this is not convincing, especially since some anaesthetics have known long term psychological effects and there's no reason to believe that a person experiencing them would know the cause intuitively.
zozbot234
2 hours ago
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The feeling of blinking out and suddenly being "back" is far from exclusive to comas or general anesthesia; it has been replicated via deep meditation. Specifically, it seems to be the core feature of what's technically known as nirodha samapatti (lit. "attainment of ceasing").
An easy way of intuiting what it might feel like (if imperfectly, of course) is just keeping a high state of lucidity and mental focus whilst you're naturally drifting in and out of light sleep; this might seem challenging at first but it's actually quite doable.
AdieuToLogic
2 hours ago
[ - ]
> The feeling of blinking out and being "back" is far from exclusive to comas or general anesthesia ...
Awesome. But this has nothing to do with the topic to which I replied:
These sound like anaesthetic side effects.
nashashmi
2 hours ago
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I have a theory that some people don’t fully wake up after the anesthesia wears off. A part of them is still sleeping. Like memory bank takes a slow break and stops working. I suspect it happened to me and now I am looking for answers.
AdieuToLogic
1 hour ago
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I don't agree with anesthesia having long-term affects similar to their initial use (excluding any allergic reactions of course).
I will say that I believe when a person experiences significant pain of any kind, it changes their lived experience such that what previously might have been painful may not be as much if the event causing the pain is relatively less. Much like how the high-water mark of a river indicates what a riverbank can withstand.
For example, a person who has never had to use crutches due to injury may see having to park their car a great distance from a store's entrance as being "a pain in the ass" and might complain loudly. Yet that same person who doesn't have the option to drive to the store due to an injury, or if they did would have to use crutches to move about, may very well not care at all where they park once they regain full mobility.
In short, pain is relative and once one "raises the bar" of what is considered painful, that which once qualified as same very well may no longer be so.
Problem is, it takes the memory of "new levels of pain" to make this happen.
ggm
1 hour ago
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It's a reasonably well understood problem for older people in particular that general anaesthesia can trigger some kind of cognitive decline in some people.
Separately at least in Australia you are given specific advice regarding avoidance of operation of construction machinery, farm machinery and the like.
Rzor
2 hours ago
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You gotta appreciate how this lovely story, (which to me has too many Is to have "enlightenment" close to it), is sitting on /business/, even though Bigthink has Neuropsych, Thinking, The Present, The Future, Life, Health and Special Issues. I guess it wasn't a conscious decision to have it there, or so I hope. ;)
vmurthy
3 hours ago
[ - ]
What a beautiful, thought provoking article! When I saw the title , I thought it was a book summary of “My stroke of insight” [0]. This book is by a neuro-anatomist who had a rare stroke resulting in the left hemisphere of her brain being incapacitated. That led her to experiences similar to that of the article’s author. Do check out the book and pair it with the article
I had a craniotomy in 1996. Similar thing. The back of my head looked a bit like his, except the scar looked more like a Blue Oyster Cult symbol (backwards question mark). I know they left a piece of the skull out, so I do have a hole in the head.
Took me a couple months to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time, but I ended up making a full recovery.
I remember being wheeled into the OR. It was odd, because there was a damn good chance I wouldn’t wake up. Or I’d spend my life in a wheelchair. The cerebellum is a bad place to have problems. I was actually pretty chill. Maybe they gave me Valium.
The recovery sucked. I spent a week in ICU (basically no sleep).
jaggederest
5 hours ago
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> Maybe they gave me Valium.
Versed/midazolam, almost certainly, was a part of the preoperative regimen.
I had jaw surgery and basically didn't sleep the night before, for obvious reasons, and they gave me a bit of versed in prep and had to wake me up on the table to put me under for anesthesia proper. Hey, not my fault the blankets were warm and the pillow was perfect.
It's a very useful medication both for anxiety, but also to reduce your seizure risk, which I imagine for cerebellar surgery was a definite factor.
lagniappe
6 hours ago
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Im glad you're still around
tomcam
5 hours ago
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Total agreement here. His posts indicate a life well lived.
We do spend a large fraction of the age of the universe not thinking.
narrator
5 hours ago
[ - ]
This is a great article. I've been in for surgery a few times, and I always cry before it because I never know what could happen. I could wind up dead, paralyzed, in chronic pain, a vegetable. Then I think to myself how unspecial I am. Millions of people die every day and yet we deny death, and lose sight of the stuff that actually matters that much. The billionaire and the homeless person still just fertilize worms after they die. That reality keeps me humble and in daily gratitude to the miracle of life, though my confidence does waver during the periods of ill health I've had.
pico303
5 hours ago
[ - ]
What a great piece. I’m so glad not only that his daughter will get to know her dad, but that her dad is going to appreciate every moment he has with her.
6stringmerc
5 hours ago
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Glad for him and without a doubt the support network and relationships he had in place significantly contributed to his positive outcome. I recently went through a similar trial and tribulation but as an inmate and by receiving sub-standard care. That's how I was able to turn inward and finally crack into real enlightenment and it's the solid kind because comparatively speaking, I had fuck-all to live for. No family. No future. No nothing but more suffering. And yet I found the release into accepting the beauty of futility. I commit to the program, I give. Let Go and Hang On. IYKYK.
linuxhansl
5 hours ago
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Without meaning this in any way condescending: I am really proud of you as fellow human being!
Finding peace in such a situation takes courage, strength, and reflection, and you apparently have/found all of these.
geoffbp
5 hours ago
[ - ]
Good read! Enjoyed that. I meditate but have never reached that state fwiw.
What brain surgery taught me about the fragile gift of consciousness
(bigthink.com)
130 points
by: NaOH
4 days ago
55 comments
electric_muse
4 hours ago
[ - ]
The piece was deeply thought-provoking, but I struggled to get through it sensing how much AI was used to write it.
I’ve been drafting a manuscript for a novel lately, trying to see how well llms can help.
I recognize this prose immediately as OpenAI gpt 5.
It loves to describe things “hum” that don’t usually hum, like the author wrote in the beginning. Plenty more descriptions match the cadence and rhythm and word choices I’ve seen writing my manuscript.
I feel like there’s a meta discussion the author was prompting here about consciousness.
Reading the writing of a real human feels more intimate. Reading the auto-tune version of writing makes me feel noticeably less connected to the reader. I know the author still input something to get this output. But there’s something blocking a deeper connection when I just “know” I’m not reading the author’s words.
Edit: llamas > llms
p2detar
3 minutes ago
[ - ]
[delayed]
chis
3 hours ago
[ - ]
I felt the exact same, I can't believe nobody else has commented on it. It feels so disrespectful to such a powerful story to tell it in this way. I mean there's a really interesting core but I just wish I could read the first draft before LLMs overwrote it to death.
"Survivor’s euphoria.” A clinical term, woefully inadequate. It wasn’t just euphoria. It was revelation."
gyomu
2 hours ago
[ - ]
Yeah the “No _____. No _____. Just the ______.” is such a dead ringer for AI writing these days that I just ignore any writing that features it.
If you don’t care about your craft as a writer to the extent that you can’t even realize how straight-out-of-a-LLM your writing sounds, I’m not going to care about it either.
fragmede
22 minutes ago
[ - ]
How do you draw the conclusion that the writer doesn't care about their craft though? If someone uses an emdash, but spent three hours and a ton of effort on a three paragraph comment and some of that time was spent running it through ChatGPT to hone their point so it comes across better, does that invalidate the point they're trying to make? Should we start documenting how long it took to write something, regardless of if an LLM was used in some capacity to help write something instead?
ChaitanyaSai
46 minutes ago
[ - ]
Yup, it's the short sentence cadence.
"And yet, hours before surgery, with death still in the room, I didn’t feel fear. I felt something quieter. Stranger. I felt connected. To her eyes. To my breath. To the weight of my feet against the floor. To the wind brushing the window."
The usage of these short sentences (which, people do use, but sparingly) is a good marker. My hunch is this is because of how they call attention to themselves and are rewarded by human RLHF participants. I don't know if incentives including spending time on essays like this but if they don't and the rater is trying to do a speed-read, these stand out.
Have written about other markers here: https://saigaddam.medium.com/it-isnt-just-x-it-s-y-54cb403d6...
One along those lines: "Not just that we think. But that we feel. That we can marvel. That we can sit in silence across from someone we love and feel time slow down and become something."
te_chris
29 minutes ago
[ - ]
Like the rlhf is all Hemingway bros (and I love Hemingway)
AdieuToLogic
2 hours ago
[ - ]
> The piece was deeply thought-provoking, but I struggled to get through it sensing how much AI was used to write it.
> I’ve been drafting a manuscript for a novel lately, trying to see how well llms can help.
> I recognize this prose immediately as OpenAI gpt 5.
Is it possible you are experiencing confirmation bias[0]?
In other words, by your own admission, you have been "trying to see how well llms can help" as it pertains to writing. With that degree of LLM intimacy, is it possible "the cadence and rhythm and word choices I’ve seen writing my manuscript" is a pattern you are predisposed to identify in other works?
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
gyomu
1 hour ago
[ - ]
That wouldn’t be confirmation bias, just pattern recognition.
If I teach English as a foreign language, am familiar with the kind of mistakes non native speakers make when writing in English, and can easily identify texts written by non native speakers - that’s not confirmation bias.
AdieuToLogic
33 minutes ago
[ - ]
> If I teach English as a foreign language, am familiar with the kind of mistakes non native speakers make when writing in English, and can easily identify texts written by non native speakers - that’s not confirmation bias.
And if you immersed yourself in the writings of non-native English speakers for a significant amount of time, then a paper written by a native English speaker was presented without you knowing who the author was, would you look for the same kind of mistakes in it that you have been finding?
gyomu
4 minutes ago
[ - ]
I wouldn’t look for anything. As I’m reading a text, something in my brain would immediately go “this is probably written by a non native speaker” when coming across certain awkward turns of phrase.
adithyassekhar
31 minutes ago
[ - ]
I wonder how it would affect those us with english as their second language. I initially learned mine through movies and tv shows from the west. Later hanging around in various forums.
That era is definitely over.
andhuman
2 hours ago
[ - ]
When I got to the third hum, I got suspicious, which is sad for this kind of beautiful experience.
golem14
1 hour ago
[ - ]
To whom do I hum, to whom?
zozbot234
3 hours ago
[ - ]
Is it really OpenAI/ChatGPT, or just the kind of writing ChatGPT was trained to replicate?
moffkalast
3 hours ago
[ - ]
Impossible to say, a few people really do write like that and their writing gets flagged by those detection systems all the time, but I think we all know which option is far more likely.
EnPissant
2 hours ago
[ - ]
I don't know if the tide has shifted on this site, but I was scolded by dang some months ago for pointing out something was obviously GPT-written. I guess that's against the rules.
rixed
4 hours ago
[ - ]
"There is a kind of consciousness that lives not in thought but in presence."
Yes, and I believe the strong association we often make between the most advanced cognitive functions and consciousness are misleading us into believing that consciousness is somehow the result of those functions, while I suspect we (conscious selves) are just witnessing those functions like we are witnessing anything, "from the outside". It's of course the most amazing part of the show, but should not be confused for it. Consciousness is not made of thinking but of observing, we just spend a lot of time observing how we think.
zozbot234
3 hours ago
[ - ]
There's no such thing as an individual conscious self that persists over time - it is always a misconception and an illusion. Consciousness is just something that living beings do, not something that they "are". It's an impersonal phenomenon (as far as it goes - there's of course plenty of things, mental states, thoughts etc. that are genuinely personal about our individual lives!) not a state of being.
AdieuToLogic
1 hour ago
[ - ]
> There's no such thing as an individual conscious self that persists over time - it is always a misconception and an illusion.
If individual consciousness does not persist over time, how does one explain existence from one day to the next? Or learning from one situation to the next?
And how is consciousness "a misconception and an illusion?"
> Consciousness is just something that living beings do, not something that they "are".
This implies a lack of awareness of self, which is fundamental to the definition of consciousness. And if a being is aware of itself, then they "are".
> It's an impersonal phenomenon ... not a state of being.
If individual consciousness does not qualify as "a state of being", then whatever could?
zozbot234
1 hour ago
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> If individual consciousness does not persist over time, how does one explain existence from one day to the next? Or learning from one situation to the next?
That's easy: consciousness piggybacks on memory, which is what really creates persistence over time. But an amnesiac can be conscious in the moment and not "learn from one situation to the next". Plenty of philosophers (including Western philosophers such as David Hume) have looked into this, and the account of individual persisting consciousness as a kind of misconception or illusion (or at least, a very rough "folk" theory of personal identity) is one that elegantly explains the data. That's before you get into the kind of deep inquiry into phenomenology that Eastern meditation practitioners would be deeply familiar with.
AdieuToLogic
17 minutes ago
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>> If individual consciousness does not persist over time, how does one explain existence from one day to the next? Or learning from one situation to the next?
> That's easy: consciousness piggybacks on memory, which is what really creates persistence over time.
One could just as easily say memory is a component of consciousness, be it short or long term versions.
> But an amnesiac can be conscious in the moment and not "learn from one situation to the next".
Amnesia is not the inability to "learn from one situation to the next." It is instead a condition affecting the ability of memory recall. Furthermore, I am unaware of any credible research claiming there exists amnesia such that all memory is blocked.
It is apparent to me you have a firm belief in your position regarding consciousness. I disagree with this position while respecting your right to have it.
rixed
2 hours ago
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I share the feeling about it being impersonal (I've started to doubt its individuality as well). I like to think of consciousness as "the universe observing itself", but that sounds a bit too new-agey.
kranner
5 hours ago
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I'd shared this article last week with the meditation group I'm part of, describing the author's state of mind on the eve of surgery as a state of samadhi. It's a great description of the state I end up in during almost every meditation session (practicing in the 'open awareness' style) and sometimes also in the middle of the day, unprompted.
I'd shared it with the group because it was interesting that the author had spontaneously landed in the state due to catastrophic circumstances, but now reading it a second time I recall this had also happened to me years ago, on the sudden death of a close family member. I consider myself lucky to be able to access it outside circumstances of personal tragedy or medical emergency. It's a great reason to learn to meditate; unfortunately you can't give people a quick preview of it or a lot more people would take meditation more seriously.
judge123
3 hours ago
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Powerful story. But let's be real: after the "survivor's euphoria" fades, how do you actually keep that level of consciousness? I feel like the daily grind would inevitably pull me back to my old self. Has anyone here had a life-changing moment and actually managed to stay changed?
trinsic2
3 hours ago
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Its a constant practice, like anything. Part of you is changed forever when you go through something like this, the awareness part mostley, you can never go back to normality even when something like that wears off.
I know from experience because I survived a brain hemorrhage. I had a state where I experienced the world differently for many years. I still do. Something cracked open in me and it has stayed that way, other aspects of my physiology are returning to a baseline state, like my nervous system changes which damped my fear responses.
siavosh
3 hours ago
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Different traditions have been systematically iterating on techniques to do exactly this for thousands of years.
AdieuToLogic
3 hours ago
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> Has anyone here had a life-changing moment and actually managed to stay changed?
A life-changing moment changes one's life by definition. Each time a person experiences one, they are changed in a way where who they were before they can remember, perhaps even look fondly upon, but know they are not that person anymore.
> Powerful story. But let's be real: after the "survivor's euphoria" fades, how do you actually keep that level of consciousness?
By living in the moment and remembering how you got there.
madaxe_again
39 minutes ago
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You typically don’t go back to the daily grind, as this kind of event often substantially changes your priorities.
I speak for myself, although I know I am not alone in my trajectory. About a decade ago I was ill enough for long enough with an uncertain enough prognosis that I was getting my affairs in order. At the same time a close friend died of an agressivo cancer, aged 32.
I decided to choose quality over quantity. Fuck my business, fuck my career, fuck stupid status games and absolutely fuck climbing the infinite pile of skulls.
Sold up. Put everything on 00 and gave the wheel a spin.
It’s been almost a decade. I still live in the woods, start my days with a coffee and birdsong and “ein heiliges ‘ja!’”, still have zero temptation to return to my life before.
nativeit
36 minutes ago
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I think one of the big bummers about this kind of thing is that it’s not really something that could be planned or chosen for. We tend to change slowly and subconsciously through the things we prioritize and routinely practice, our brains and bodies adapt to our “normal”.
The times we tend to adopt changes quickly and consciously are most often with circumstance and external pressures, and the shortcomings implicit with such rapid adaptations can manifest as neuroses/complexes. In traumatic scenarios this might be something like PTSD, but it isn’t necessarily all downsides, either. People taking therapeutic amounts of MDMA or psilocybin (as in, occasionally, not “micro dosing” or whatever Elon Musk seems to be doing) might experience a durable improvement in subjective happiness and optimism.
Disclaimer: this is my own intuitive and wholly unqualified understanding of this, which was arrived at via discussions with behavioral therapists, but I’m an IT consultant, wtf do I really know about it?
I will say that I’ve found mindful meditation highly effective for treating mild to moderate PTSD. It isn’t fast to get started, but after a few weeks of training, you can deploy your own chemical Xanax directly within your own brain using breathing patterns. It really worked for me. I used the app “Headspace” to start out.
cocire
5 hours ago
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https://imgur.com/a/vsRq0a9 I had some occipital lobe taken out in 2010 when I was 20 years old, to try to treat epilepsy!
sitkack
3 hours ago
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Wow, that looks drastic?
How much did it help? Did you notice a change in your personality? How long did it take to recover? Did you lose vision in one eye?
cocire
3 hours ago
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They really only took a tiny piece of brain out, I guess. They didn't show me, sadly. :(
It was all occipital lobe so vision would have been the only thing affected. I had terrible vision in the lower-left quadrant of both of my eyes anyways, based on a medical field-of-vision test, along with my own tendency to bump into people and things on my left side (still the case).
Based on many electroencephalographs (EEGs), they decided my epileptic seizures stemmed from the lower right occipital lobe of my brain. It is kind of neat proof to me that the opposite side of your brain has effects on the other side of your body; right occipital lobe affecting left visual field.
So, they removed some brain, which actually did not affect my epilepsy at all, positively or negatively. I went into the hospital, got surgery, and was out maybe a week later - when that photo was taken. I had to go back a week or two later to have the staples taken out.
My lower left peripheral vision is worse than it used to be. I have about eight visual seizures that each last maybe a minute or two per day, but I can carry on a conversation and nobody even knows. I take seven pills every morning, and another four each night. I do not have a drivers license, car, or really ever plan to drive again, but that is kind of why I moved to live in a city where I can walk, take public transit, and get deliveries quickly/reliably.
On the nerd side, I track my seizures with my own homemade Python Django (w/ REST Framework) application, PostgreSQL, and an Apple Shortcut, usually from my iPhone or watch. Datasette and Highcharts make visualizing all my seizures tracked since December 2021 pretty cool.
interloxia
14 minutes ago
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Do you also track /check your field of view?
A long time ago I made a simple tool to check my father's visual field changes due to cancer. At first he found it interesting to track his condition. Unfortunately it accurately tracked his condition and he, in my option wisely, stoped using it.
All the best managing and tracking
ggm
4 hours ago
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I learned a new term: Survivor's Euphoria. Only having had relatively minor procedures, I have only had relatively minor instances. But I have had a feeling of "I came back" which I have solely after waking up from anasthaesia. As if the interrupted mental processes carry some flow state forward, which I re-attach to.
There's a longer baseline term which might go with this: Survivor's Depression. I have found after successful surgery, diagnostics, any kind of procedure after the initial elation, I have a very strong down-mood. It's not unlike coming back from holiday and feeling exhausted.
modeless
4 hours ago
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These sound like anaesthetic side effects.
AdieuToLogic
3 hours ago
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>> But I have had a feeling of "I came back" which I have solely after waking up from anasthaesia.
> These sound like anaesthetic side effects.
General anesthesia[0] used in surgeries are effectively artificially induced comas. The pre-op discussion with the anesthesiologist includes them describing this and that there is a very real risk that you will die from its usage.
Regaining consciousness after having it applied most certainly invokes a feeling of "I came back" and has nothing to do with side effects.
Source: I have had two general anesthesia[0] and one epidural[1] surgeries.
0 - https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/anesthesia/about...
1 - https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/21896-epidu...
modeless
38 seconds ago
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OK but you haven't provided any evidence, just a personal anecdote. I hope you understand that this is not convincing, especially since some anaesthetics have known long term psychological effects and there's no reason to believe that a person experiencing them would know the cause intuitively.
zozbot234
2 hours ago
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The feeling of blinking out and suddenly being "back" is far from exclusive to comas or general anesthesia; it has been replicated via deep meditation. Specifically, it seems to be the core feature of what's technically known as nirodha samapatti (lit. "attainment of ceasing").
An easy way of intuiting what it might feel like (if imperfectly, of course) is just keeping a high state of lucidity and mental focus whilst you're naturally drifting in and out of light sleep; this might seem challenging at first but it's actually quite doable.
AdieuToLogic
2 hours ago
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> The feeling of blinking out and being "back" is far from exclusive to comas or general anesthesia ...
Awesome. But this has nothing to do with the topic to which I replied:
nashashmi
2 hours ago
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I have a theory that some people don’t fully wake up after the anesthesia wears off. A part of them is still sleeping. Like memory bank takes a slow break and stops working. I suspect it happened to me and now I am looking for answers.
AdieuToLogic
1 hour ago
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I don't agree with anesthesia having long-term affects similar to their initial use (excluding any allergic reactions of course).
I will say that I believe when a person experiences significant pain of any kind, it changes their lived experience such that what previously might have been painful may not be as much if the event causing the pain is relatively less. Much like how the high-water mark of a river indicates what a riverbank can withstand.
For example, a person who has never had to use crutches due to injury may see having to park their car a great distance from a store's entrance as being "a pain in the ass" and might complain loudly. Yet that same person who doesn't have the option to drive to the store due to an injury, or if they did would have to use crutches to move about, may very well not care at all where they park once they regain full mobility.
In short, pain is relative and once one "raises the bar" of what is considered painful, that which once qualified as same very well may no longer be so.
Problem is, it takes the memory of "new levels of pain" to make this happen.
ggm
1 hour ago
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It's a reasonably well understood problem for older people in particular that general anaesthesia can trigger some kind of cognitive decline in some people.
Separately at least in Australia you are given specific advice regarding avoidance of operation of construction machinery, farm machinery and the like.
Rzor
2 hours ago
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You gotta appreciate how this lovely story, (which to me has too many Is to have "enlightenment" close to it), is sitting on /business/, even though Bigthink has Neuropsych, Thinking, The Present, The Future, Life, Health and Special Issues. I guess it wasn't a conscious decision to have it there, or so I hope. ;)
vmurthy
3 hours ago
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What a beautiful, thought provoking article! When I saw the title , I thought it was a book summary of “My stroke of insight” [0]. This book is by a neuro-anatomist who had a rare stroke resulting in the left hemisphere of her brain being incapacitated. That led her to experiences similar to that of the article’s author. Do check out the book and pair it with the article
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142292.My_Stroke_of_Insi...
ChrisMarshallNY
6 hours ago
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I had a craniotomy in 1996. Similar thing. The back of my head looked a bit like his, except the scar looked more like a Blue Oyster Cult symbol (backwards question mark). I know they left a piece of the skull out, so I do have a hole in the head.
Took me a couple months to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time, but I ended up making a full recovery.
I remember being wheeled into the OR. It was odd, because there was a damn good chance I wouldn’t wake up. Or I’d spend my life in a wheelchair. The cerebellum is a bad place to have problems. I was actually pretty chill. Maybe they gave me Valium.
The recovery sucked. I spent a week in ICU (basically no sleep).
jaggederest
5 hours ago
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> Maybe they gave me Valium.
Versed/midazolam, almost certainly, was a part of the preoperative regimen.
I had jaw surgery and basically didn't sleep the night before, for obvious reasons, and they gave me a bit of versed in prep and had to wake me up on the table to put me under for anesthesia proper. Hey, not my fault the blankets were warm and the pillow was perfect.
It's a very useful medication both for anxiety, but also to reduce your seizure risk, which I imagine for cerebellar surgery was a definite factor.
lagniappe
6 hours ago
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Im glad you're still around
tomcam
5 hours ago
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Total agreement here. His posts indicate a life well lived.
AIorNot
3 hours ago
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this moral of this zen story
https://www.graceguts.com/quotations/zen-story-tigers-and-a-...
sitkack
3 hours ago
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We do spend a large fraction of the age of the universe not thinking.
narrator
5 hours ago
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This is a great article. I've been in for surgery a few times, and I always cry before it because I never know what could happen. I could wind up dead, paralyzed, in chronic pain, a vegetable. Then I think to myself how unspecial I am. Millions of people die every day and yet we deny death, and lose sight of the stuff that actually matters that much. The billionaire and the homeless person still just fertilize worms after they die. That reality keeps me humble and in daily gratitude to the miracle of life, though my confidence does waver during the periods of ill health I've had.
pico303
5 hours ago
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What a great piece. I’m so glad not only that his daughter will get to know her dad, but that her dad is going to appreciate every moment he has with her.
6stringmerc
5 hours ago
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Glad for him and without a doubt the support network and relationships he had in place significantly contributed to his positive outcome. I recently went through a similar trial and tribulation but as an inmate and by receiving sub-standard care. That's how I was able to turn inward and finally crack into real enlightenment and it's the solid kind because comparatively speaking, I had fuck-all to live for. No family. No future. No nothing but more suffering. And yet I found the release into accepting the beauty of futility. I commit to the program, I give. Let Go and Hang On. IYKYK.
linuxhansl
5 hours ago
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Without meaning this in any way condescending: I am really proud of you as fellow human being!
Finding peace in such a situation takes courage, strength, and reflection, and you apparently have/found all of these.
geoffbp
5 hours ago
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Good read! Enjoyed that. I meditate but have never reached that state fwiw.