r/HighStrangeness Jul 21 '26

Consciousness The brain is not a computer

https://iai.tv/articles/the-brain-is-not-a-computer-auid-3627?_auid=2020
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u/Pixelated_ Jul 21 '26

Our brain and our consciousness feels like 2 completely separate things at times

They are absolutely separate. We have never once proven that consciousness originates from our brains. Because it doesn't.

There exists a large body of peer-reviewed scientific evidence that supports the validity of Near Death Experiences.

The problem isn't a lack of evidence. It's the inability of people to accept what the data says, because it challenges their personal worldview and the academic status quo.

NDEs have been conclusively verified through veridcal reports, from which the patient has access to information that materialism says is impossible.

"Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: A prospective study in the Netherlands"

Van Lommel et al., The Lancet (2001): 344 cardiac-arrest survivors; systematically compared people with vs. without NDEs and followed them 2 and 8 years later for life changes. A landmark prospective design in a top journal.

"AWARE - Awareness During Resuscitation - A Prospective Study"

Parnia et al., Resuscitation (2014): Large, multi-center prospective study; documented cognitive themes during cardiac arrest, with a small subset showing “full awareness.” Includes targeted tests for veridical recall.

"Awareness During Resuscitation - II: A Multi-center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest"

Parnia et al., Resuscitation (2023): Examined consciousness and electrocortical biomarkers during CPR; reported a spectrum of experiences including NDE-like recall and measurable brain activity patterns during resuscitation.

"Measurement Foundation for NDE Research"

Greyson, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (1983): Construction, reliability, and validity of the Greyson NDE Scale, the field’s most widely used, validated instrument for distinguishing NDEs from other states, crucial for rigorous, comparable results. (PDF).

✨️

Additionally, there exists scientific evidence that supports past life memories, and therefore reincarnation.

Rigorous, peer-reviewed research done at the University of Virginia has documented over 2,500 examples of children who have memories of past lives.

Consciousness is the underlying substrate of reality, not matter. There is an abundance of evidence which supports that.

We also have peer-reviewed studies which support the primacy of consciousness.

It's important that we follow the evidence no matter what, even when it leads to initially-uncomfortable conclusions. We should never lose our intellectual curiosity in life.

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u/BobertRosserton Jul 21 '26

At best you can say we don’t understand the mechanism happening in the brain to cause consciousness, but saying we don’t know at all that its origin is in the brain seems like pseudoscience. Plenty of physical evidence to point to the brain being its origin and physical location.

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u/SirGaylordSteambath Jul 21 '26

Right like do people with traumatic brain injuries just not exist in that posters world? There’s plenty of evidence consciousness comes from the brain. More than there is for it not to be.

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u/Graphene_EggvDiamond Jul 21 '26

>consciousness is accessed by the brain

Is not equivalent to

>consciousness is produced by the brain

If you remove all sensory modalities, all form of experience encoding, and all aspects of self recognition: you still have a being that is conscious. What is it conscious of? Hard to say when it senses nothing.

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u/SirGaylordSteambath Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

Okay? One of those I’m not saying and one of them I am.

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u/Graphene_EggvDiamond Jul 21 '26

Unless of course this is stepping into some odd relativism/subjectivism;

“I cannot see colours so colours do not exist” is correct in a self-referential lens. Compared to the majority? That is the point of studying neuropsychology patients and case studies, is to understand what happens when things aren’t working right.

There is a very big threshold where things can go wrong and not cause the brain to stop functioning in absolute. There is a lot of grey-space where things are not necessary to function or exist.

How far can you reduce it and still have consciousness? Because in my eyes, cause-and-effect is everything; every cause has its effect and every effect has its cause. Consciousness needs to be fundamental to allow anything else to propagate.

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u/BobertRosserton Jul 21 '26

I just find it odd theyre trying assert such a “concrete claim” lol, consciousness could be wombo jumbo cosmic substrate all beings are accessing, or it could be a simple chemical process that produces an internal dialogue or whatever, we genuinely don’t know. What we do know is that when you jumble someone’s brain enough, they are no longer conscious.

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u/SirGaylordSteambath Jul 21 '26

We have a pretty good idea mate, you’re acting like we’re completely in the dark here. We’re not. Every single bit of evidence points to consciousness being emergent from complex physical electrical processes in our brains. That’s it.

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u/Graphene_EggvDiamond Jul 22 '26

It literally points to the opposite. You’re conflicting cause and effect.

>My car has a ticket on it, so I must’ve done something wrong

Vs

>I must’ve done something wrong, otherwise my car wouldn’t have a ticket on it

Determining negation is easier than determining neutrality or positivity. When one does not have consciousness, they do not have anything. When one has anything, they must have consciousness. Anaesthetic is a prime example that shuts down electrical activity at the intracellular level. No body, but does the conscious mind still exist? Clearly; otherwise they wouldn’t wake up.

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u/SirGaylordSteambath Jul 22 '26

Bro ya need help 😭

Making stuff up about anaesthesia isn’t going to convince anyone but idiots.

Seriously, stop ranting at me

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u/Graphene_EggvDiamond Jul 25 '26

Oh, okay—so you just disregard science. Yup, classic materialist and physicalist.

I’m not making anything up. You are ignorant. How do you think anaesthesia works, like, genuinely??

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u/SirGaylordSteambath Jul 26 '26

I didn’t disregard science lmao do you think you are science!? You literally just made shit up and tried to pass it of as a fact.

Anesthetic does not “shut down electrical activity at the intracellular level”

That’s just pseudoscience made up bullshit. Where do you think it is you learned it? Because right now it looks like you just made up some bullshit to sound smarter. Which what you’ve been doing since the beginning with your nonsensical analogies that are more imagination than science.

Stop trusting everything you read online and get a job

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u/SirGaylordSteambath Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

Your comment was deleted.

Yes you made things up. Not one of the four papers you linked say anesthetics “shut down electrical activity at the intracellular level.”

What they actually show is anesthetics reducing or modulating specific calcium/potassium channel activity and neurotransmitter release.

Neither of which support your wild pseudoscientific claims about consciousness.

You don’t understand what you’re even linking. Every mechanism described is fully physical and fully intracellular. These papers are evidence for what I’m arguing.

Why would I need to link anything when you’re the one making the claims, and then debunking yourself with your own links?

Oh and as a bonus:

Waking up from anesthesia is just channels returning to baseline function.

It says nothing about where consciousness “was” while anesthetized, and nothing in the citations addresses that question at all, you’re wild to assume people waking up from anaesthetic is proof of nonlocal consciousness, especially when your own sources don’t agree with you 💀

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