Discussion How do you think death feels like? Or how you would want it to feel

[Boudika]

Nostalgia makes me feel more like killing myself so I was taken to contemplate death. Share your thoughts!

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

1 nano-second after this brain dies is Death. Death is non-existence forever. And that's what i want . you can't feel pain nor anything since you don't exist.

The brain is what creates consciousness and unbearable pain . a human is only the body and brain they are.

Any human or other animal can fall into a trap of excruciating pain but only while alive. if the brain is dead the human can never suffer again.


the brain learns about the body every second even in the 3rd trimester. when a limb gets amputated the brain many times acts like the leg or arm is still there and feels pain there. to be a disembodied brain would be a nightmare to the brain. just another reasons why all these theories about afterlifves, simulations, reincarnation are false. plus there is no evidence but a lot of evidence for the brain being the source of all thinking and consciousness .

A mechanistic theory of consciousness | Graziano Lab: CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE SOCIAL BRAIN

grazianolab.princeton.edu

Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness, known as the "attention schema theory," proposes that consciousness is not a fundamental property but rather a mental model constructed by the brain to represent its own attention, essentially describing itself as being conscious by creating a simplified model of its attention processes; this model is what we experience as subjective awareness.

Key points about Graziano's theory:

• Attention as the core:
  Consciousness is primarily linked to the brain's ability to focus attention, similar to how our "body schema" represents our physical body.
• 
  
• Model building:
  The brain constructs a simplified model of its own attention, which we interpret as our conscious experience.
  
  
• 
  
• Not a real entity:
  According to Graziano, consciousness is not a separate entity but rather a mental construct created by the brain's information processing.
• 
  
• Social implications:
  This theory also explains why we attribute consciousness to others, as our brains naturally model the attention of others based on our own internal model.

-------- from that paper linked above :

It is not yet clear when animals evolved the ability to attribute awareness to each
other. Since many species of birds are highly social, perhaps birds can attribute
awareness to other birds [Thom and Clayton, 2013]. Certainly many mammals can,
including humans. The last common ancestor of birds and mammals lived approxi-
mately 350 MYA, and therefore a reasonable guess is that the social attribution of
awareness ¯rst appeared sometime before that though of course it could have
evolved independently in both groups.
In this extension of the attention schema theory, awareness ¯rst evolved to help
control one's own attention, and then gradually expanded into another use that has
ended up de¯ning us humans socially and culturally. It gave us our concept of mind
and allowed us to live immersed in a society of the minds of other people.
In the human brain, there is some evidence of overlap between the areas res-
ponsible for attributing awareness to others and the areas necessary for one's own
awareness. This overlap in function is particularly evident in an area of the cerebral
cortex called the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), more or less just above the ears
and about an inch in. The TPJ has been a scienti¯c puzzle because of an apparent
con°ict between two competing lines of research. In one line of research, it is involved
in constructing models of other people's minds [e.g., Brunet et al., 2000; Ciaramidaro
et al., 2007; Fletcher et al., 1995; Gallagher et al., 2000; Goel et al., 1995; Saxe and
Kanwisher, 2003; Saxe and Wexler, 2005; Vogeley et al., 2001]. In another line of
research, the TPJ is involved in attention and awareness [e.g., Asta¯ev et al., 2006;
Corbetta et al., 2000; Mitchell, 2008; Shulman et al., 2010]. Damage to the TPJ can
even cause a severe and long-lasting de¯cit in awareness called hemispatial neglect
[Karnath et al., 2001; Vallar and Perani, 1986]. In neglect, typically damage to
the right side of the brain causes a loss of awareness of anything to the left side of
the body.
Why should a region of the cortex be involved in social cognition in some exper-
iments and in attention and awareness in other experiments? One possible reason
might be that this brain region participates in computations about awareness,
whether you are attributing awareness to yourself or to someone else. It would not be
correct to claim that the TPJ is the source of all computations related to awareness.
However, it may play a role.
We recently conducted an experiment to test this hypothesis more directly [Kelly
et al., 2014]. The experiment involved two stages.First, people were scanned in an
MRI machine to measure brain activity. The subjects looked at a picture of a cartoon
face that was next to an object and rated how aware the cartoon person seemed to be

of the object. In this task, certain areas of the brain became active above control
levels. One area of activation was consistently within the TPJ.

 

[OTanerd]

For a long time in my life, even since I was a child, I have wondered what death must feel like, what comes after it, etc., etc.

The truth is, I believe that death is the greatest pain we will ever experience in our entire lives. Our body is warning us that what we are feeling at that moment means there is no turning back—it means we will cease to exist; and then, everything simply fades away.

I wish it were a little more special, not so cold and indifferent. Maybe, just seconds before ceasing to exist, I could begin to have dreams as vivid as the ones I experience when I sleep—a dream fast enough to be fully experienced before disappearing, yet long enough to feel something profound. I would want the dream to be about everything I have ever felt in my life, reliving those happy days and even the not-so-happy ones, seeing before my eyes the answer to my life and existence through empiricism. Something like watching my life flash before my eyes—until I slowly feel myself fading away and find that peace I can only achieve when I sleep and dream.

The truth is, the experience of death can change significantly depending on how one dies, and both the duration and level of agony can vary drastically. Many people who have had near-death experiences mention that, moments before dying, their body shuts down, they begin to see shimmering lights, and they feel a deep sense of peace. Others have experienced such intense pain that they could think of nothing else. It is truly difficult to encapsulate the experience of death in just a few words, but at some point, we will all come to know what it feels like.

 

[Namelesa]

It would depend on how the person dies. Something like N sounds peaceful but most ways to die are painful or even torturous as our bodies have literally been made this way to incentivise us not to die despite it inevitable going to happen no matter what.

If we are saying about what happens after dying then I assume its non-existence which will mean you feel nothing and not want anything. To me this what I want best as this would allow me to escape my suffering and my fears and desires forever.

 

[ma0]

Death doesn't feel like anything. Zero.

 

[needthebus]

this may not want to be what you want to hear

the process of dying during my last suicide attempt, which somehow, sadly, didn't end me, was extreme pain

like, just awful consuming pain, writhing screaming, horrendous pain, and it lasted hours, it was an overdose and it didn't work

i think as part of natural selection, our brains put out enormous amounts of pain when faced with death, and there's just no way around it if death isn't extremely quick, and even then, it probably hurts

i could be wrong and hope the truth is different.

when i finally passed out after the suicide attempt, i just blacked out. i woke up and life continued, although im still not certain i lived after that point. this could be some fucked up simulation. it seems probable it is, actually, given how much fucking poison i consumed. oh well

the blacking out was just like a sudden end. and nothing. i do not think i have a soul or am unique or special or anything that matters. someone could have easily, with enough computing power and technology, determined my state at death and simulated it later, perhaps by an advanced or more evolved lifeform or humans with much more technology. when i blacked out, it felt like death, and mostly, i was just tired, the pain had been exhausting, and i felt glad to die, but also sad that things were ending as they were. but i'm not sure that mattered... i wish it had just ended...

and since then my life has felt like a fake simulated epilogue, and it's hard to believe this is real, hard to believe i didn't die. the pain was excruciating and it was a phenomenal amount of poison

 

[L'absent]

Death has no sensation. All sensations, perceptions, and experiences belong to life, to the functioning of the body and mind. Death, as I understand it, is the total absence of everything: no more consciousness, no more thought, no more "self."

Asking how "death feels" is, in a way, a paradox, because there's no one left to feel it. It's nothingness, and nothingness cannot be perceived. Everything related to feeling exists only in life.

 

[human909]

after death my believe is nothing, you just there in everlasting peace. just in the non-existing.

 

[OTanerd]

and since then my life has felt like a fake simulated epilogue, and it's hard to believe this is real, hard to believe i didn't die. the pain was excruciating and it was a phenomenal amount of poison

I'm sorry to hear that you had to go through that experience; it sounds horrible.
Many times, we think that there is something special in the experience of dying, perhaps to validate our entire existence, when in reality, it is often the most natural thing: immense pain.
Sometimes, it does sadden me that there is such immense pain even when we are dying.

 

[CatLvr]

I'm gonna be odd man out here I guess. I do believe there is something after this life. I had a near death experience and was visited by the spirits. One that wanted my soul and terrified the living shit out of me and another that, when I looked at it, gave me the most intense feeling of love and calmness I have ever felt. That spirit made it clear to me that I had nothing to fear -- that to stay or go was my choice. I do not fear dying now. I know I will have others who have gone before to comfort and guide me.

 

[needthebus]

I'm sorry to hear that you had to go through that experience; it sounds horrible.
Many times, we think that there is something special in the experience of dying, perhaps to validate our entire existence, when in reality, it is often the most natural thing: immense pain.
Sometimes, it does sadden me that there is such immense pain even when we are dying.

it was horrible, but my life had been so awful prior to that so it wasn't like i expect life to be good, by that point i was hopeless

i was really annoyed when i didn't die. i felt like i got ripped off.

usually in life, we endure pain in things like working or school or being healthy hoping to get some result, and i endured so much severe pain, and then after, i was alive. it felt unfair. like, it hurt that bad and i'm fucking alive? wtf?

if you've ever watched a TV show for a long time, and then the series finale just absolutely sucked, it was like that times 1 billion. not that the ending to my life was awful and disappointing, but that i endured so much pain and stayed alive

if reality isn't real, and it's simulated at this point, it would likely be because an intelligent future society thought my death was so awful and unfair, and they wanted to write a better less awful ending, so now it's this... only it doesn't feel real, seems to have plot holes, and just everything seems like not believable. It feels unfair to resurrect my memory to make people feel better about what in fact did happen, and because it seems so implausible that i survived, it sort of taints any simulation, because i question whether it's real, impacting any motivation in my life, i feel like my actual life has been exploited, and now i'm in some monstrous reality that doesn't seem plausible or just exists to humiliate me or prod at me somehow

it's likely most experiences are simulated according to some theories, however, so nothing may have been real since way before then, but life felt much more plausible prior to that, and my survival doesn't make mathematical sense to me.

 

[LostLily]

Hopefully, quick and painless

 

[be or not to be]

this may not want to be what you want to hear

the process of dying during my last suicide attempt, which somehow, sadly, didn't end me, was extreme pain

like, just awful consuming pain, writhing screaming, horrendous pain, and it lasted hours, it was an overdose and it didn't work

i think as part of natural selection, our brains put out enormous amounts of pain when faced with death, and there's just no way around it if death isn't extremely quick, and even then, it probably hurts

i could be wrong and hope the truth is different.

when i finally passed out after the suicide attempt, i just blacked out. i woke up and life continued, although im still not certain i lived after that point. this could be some fucked up simulation. it seems probable it is, actually, given how much fucking poison i consumed. oh well

the blacking out was just like a sudden end. and nothing. i do not think i have a soul or am unique or special or anything that matters. someone could have easily, with enough computing power and technology, determined my state at death and simulated it later, perhaps by an advanced or more evolved lifeform or humans with much more technology. when i blacked out, it felt like death, and mostly, i was just tired, the pain had been exhausting, and i felt glad to die, but also sad that things were ending as they were. but i'm not sure that mattered... i wish it had just ended...

and since then my life has felt like a fake simulated epilogue, and it's hard to believe this is real, hard to believe i didn't die. the pain was excruciating and it was a phenomenal amount of poison

What poison did you take?

 

[needthebus]

What poison did you take?

i'm sorry, there are too many pro-lifers that are on here and I don't want some pro-lifer to be able to match up a random poison I took with what was said on here and somehow try to say that I'm "needthebus" and must be forced into locked psychiatric treatment so that i don't die because suicides make baby jesus cry and it's better if i keep suffering because that makes jesus happy.

 

[J&L383]

1 nano-second after this brain dies is Death. Death is non-existence forever. And that's what i want . you can't feel pain nor anything since you don't exist.

The brain is what creates consciousness and unbearable pain . a human is only the body and brain they are.

Any human or other animal can fall into a trap of excruciating pain but only while alive. if the brain is dead the human can never suffer again.


the brain learns about the body every second even in the 3rd trimester. when a limb gets amputated the brain many times acts like the leg or arm is still there and feels pain there. to be a disembodied brain would be a nightmare to the brain. just another reasons why all these theories about afterlifves, simulations, reincarnation are false. plus there is no evidence but a lot of evidence for the brain being the source of all thinking and consciousness .

A mechanistic theory of consciousness | Graziano Lab: CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE SOCIAL BRAIN

grazianolab.princeton.edu

Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness, known as the "attention schema theory," proposes that consciousness is not a fundamental property but rather a mental model constructed by the brain to represent its own attention, essentially describing itself as being conscious by creating a simplified model of its attention processes; this model is what we experience as subjective awareness.

Key points about Graziano's theory:

• Attention as the core:
  Consciousness is primarily linked to the brain's ability to focus attention, similar to how our "body schema" represents our physical body.
• 
  
• Model building:
  The brain constructs a simplified model of its own attention, which we interpret as our conscious experience.
  
  
• 
  
• Not a real entity:
  According to Graziano, consciousness is not a separate entity but rather a mental construct created by the brain's information processing.
• 
  
• Social implications:
  This theory also explains why we attribute consciousness to others, as our brains naturally model the attention of others based on our own internal model.

-------- from that paper linked above :

It is not yet clear when animals evolved the ability to attribute awareness to each
other. Since many species of birds are highly social, perhaps birds can attribute
awareness to other birds [Thom and Clayton, 2013]. Certainly many mammals can,
including humans. The last common ancestor of birds and mammals lived approxi-
mately 350 MYA, and therefore a reasonable guess is that the social attribution of
awareness ¯rst appeared sometime before that though of course it could have
evolved independently in both groups.
In this extension of the attention schema theory, awareness ¯rst evolved to help
control one's own attention, and then gradually expanded into another use that has
ended up de¯ning us humans socially and culturally. It gave us our concept of mind
and allowed us to live immersed in a society of the minds of other people.
In the human brain, there is some evidence of overlap between the areas res-
ponsible for attributing awareness to others and the areas necessary for one's own
awareness. This overlap in function is particularly evident in an area of the cerebral
cortex called the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), more or less just above the ears
and about an inch in. The TPJ has been a scienti¯c puzzle because of an apparent
con°ict between two competing lines of research. In one line of research, it is involved
in constructing models of other people's minds [e.g., Brunet et al., 2000; Ciaramidaro
et al., 2007; Fletcher et al., 1995; Gallagher et al., 2000; Goel et al., 1995; Saxe and
Kanwisher, 2003; Saxe and Wexler, 2005; Vogeley et al., 2001]. In another line of
research, the TPJ is involved in attention and awareness [e.g., Asta¯ev et al., 2006;
Corbetta et al., 2000; Mitchell, 2008; Shulman et al., 2010]. Damage to the TPJ can
even cause a severe and long-lasting de¯cit in awareness called hemispatial neglect
[Karnath et al., 2001; Vallar and Perani, 1986]. In neglect, typically damage to
the right side of the brain causes a loss of awareness of anything to the left side of
the body.
Why should a region of the cortex be involved in social cognition in some exper-
iments and in attention and awareness in other experiments? One possible reason
might be that this brain region participates in computations about awareness,
whether you are attributing awareness to yourself or to someone else. It would not be
correct to claim that the TPJ is the source of all computations related to awareness.
However, it may play a role.
We recently conducted an experiment to test this hypothesis more directly [Kelly
et al., 2014]. The experiment involved two stages.First, people were scanned in an
MRI machine to measure brain activity. The subjects looked at a picture of a cartoon
face that was next to an object and rated how aware the cartoon person seemed to be

of the object. In this task, certain areas of the brain became active above control
levels. One area of activation was consistently within the TPJ.

 

[SeyOShake]

My mind is still undulating between accepting the likelihood of my consciousness being absorbed back into a zero-point of non-existence, and the idea of my soul/consciousness getting a chance to re-assemble into a new 'life' of some sort.

Whether existence all fades back into itself taking my soul with it, or it ends up changing form, giving me another chance to experience things from a new point of being, I feel positive that it will be an improvement overall compared to this current life.

 

[Richard Langford]

I'm gonna be odd man out here I guess. I do believe there is something after this life. I had a near death experience and was visited by the spirits. One that wanted my soul and terrified the living shit out of me and another that, when I looked at it, gave me the most intense feeling of love and calmness I have ever felt. That spirit made it clear to me that I had nothing to fear -- that to stay or go was my choice. I do not fear dying now. I know I will have others who have gone before to comfort and guide me.

There's quite a few of us of this mindset so you're far from the odd man out.

i'm sorry, there are too many pro-lifers that are on here and I don't want some pro-lifer to be able to match up a random poison I took with what was said on here and somehow try to say that I'm "needthebus" and must be forced into locked psychiatric treatment so that i don't die because suicides make baby jesus cry and it's better if i keep suffering because that makes jesus happy.

I think that's very unlikely realistically.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

I think that death is just permanent non existence. There is no feeling or thoughts or emotions because there is no "you". I see death as just an endless dreamless sleep

 

[Boudika]

this may not want to be what you want to hear

the process of dying during my last suicide attempt, which somehow, sadly, didn't end me, was extreme pain

like, just awful consuming pain, writhing screaming, horrendous pain, and it lasted hours, it was an overdose and it didn't work

i think as part of natural selection, our brains put out enormous amounts of pain when faced with death, and there's just no way around it if death isn't extremely quick, and even then, it probably hurts

i could be wrong and hope the truth is different.

when i finally passed out after the suicide attempt, i just blacked out. i woke up and life continued, although im still not certain i lived after that point. this could be some fucked up simulation. it seems probable it is, actually, given how much fucking poison i consumed. oh well

the blacking out was just like a sudden end. and nothing. i do not think i have a soul or am unique or special or anything that matters. someone could have easily, with enough computing power and technology, determined my state at death and simulated it later, perhaps by an advanced or more evolved lifeform or humans with much more technology. when i blacked out, it felt like death, and mostly, i was just tired, the pain had been exhausting, and i felt glad to die, but also sad that things were ending as they were. but i'm not sure that mattered... i wish it had just ended...

and since then my life has felt like a fake simulated epilogue, and it's hard to believe this is real, hard to believe i didn't die. the pain was excruciating and it was a phenomenal amount of poison

I'm sorry you had to go through that

Unfortunately overdose is one of the most painful ways to ctb, so prop that's why there was that much pain. I hope you don't have any lasting side effects from that attempt and you are feeling better

 

[heisenberg]

during my one and only suicide attempt (overdose). i remember this overwhelming feeling of just wanting to sleep. i knew if i closed my eyes though that i wouldn't wake up. i didn't feel scared, or any pain. it felt almost peaceful knowing that i could go to sleep and never wake up. when i finally got to the ER, i passed out immediately. everything went black and i don't remember anything much about the next few days. i was in a coma and at one point the only thing i did remember is what i think was me meeting death. i was in a dimly light hallway, i was walking down with the grim reaper behind me (ik this sounds cheesy but stay with me). at one point we stopped walking when we approached three doors next to each other. each door was closed. i wasn't nervous still about being with death, only nervous about what was behind the door. i picked the middle door and slowly started opening it. as soon as i the light behind the door as it cracked open, i started having a seizure (irl) and i was back to reality. i've never came close to even dreaming anything like that again. i wasn't scared at any point, if anything i was realized that i knew death was quite literally at the door. i often think about what's behind the three of them. the only thing i know is everything ceased to exist after i passed out. it was a true period of nothingness - sleeping without dreams, no thoughts, no worries. i slipped away.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I suspect unless you're very lucky, a whole bunch of pain and fear on the run up. Possibly some crazy hallucinogenic shit as the brain panicks that it's about to die and conjurs up NDE's. I imagine the actual point of death to be similar to being put under anaesthetic though. You're here and then, you're not- if the person is actually conscious/ awake. Weirdly, I envisage that very last moment to be peaceful. Even if the run up to it wasn't.

 

[FuneralCry]

All I want death to be is permanent non-existence, I just want to never suffer in this cruel, torturous existence ever again, to me existence will always be the most dreadful abomination that was so tragically imposed that just causes so much suffering all for the sake of it and problems there were never a need for, existence itself is the ultimate problem to me and is something I'd never wish for that I only wish to be permanently free from, to me non-existence is the only peace and is all I see as desirable. I see existence as the most terrible tragic mistake that just causes endless amounts of harm and suffering torturing existing beings with no limit as to how much agony they can feel, no matter what I'd always prefer to be permanently unconscious, I'd always prefer to not exist than suffer so unnecessarily in this existence just to die in agony tortured by old age.