[HN Gopher] Psychogenic death, the phenomenon of "thinking" your...
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Psychogenic death, the phenomenon of "thinking" yourself to death
Author : weare138
Score : 244 points
Date : 2022-01-05 09:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.salon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.salon.com)
| giantg2 wrote:
| I would have thought depression and demoralized would have been
| flipped. Like one could be demoralized in an area without being
| depressed.
|
| I'm completely demoralized at work and have mostly stopped caring
| about it. But I find enjoyment in many things outside of work.
| Basically, I've become a terrible employee now that I see that
| the company (really all companies) will not stop lying and now
| focus most of my energy on hobbies outside of work.
| moolcool wrote:
| This reminds me of the Monty Python "Funniest Joke in the World"
| sketch
| newsbinator wrote:
| > But sometimes the threat -- or the perception of it -- doesn't
| pass. In that case, a person can lose hope of escape and, "the
| prefrontal cortex deliberately inhibits the production of
| dopamine in the basal ganglia to well below its functional
| level," says Leach. "That's associated with the feeling of
| hopelessness." If this continues for too long, it can become
| impossible to restart dopamine production. The person in this
| situation begins a "spiral of disengagement,"
| colordrops wrote:
| Woah, there's a name for my greatest phobia. I've got PTSD from
| experiencing an NDE by thinking myself there during a psychedelic
| trip.
| hosh wrote:
| My understanding is that old school physicians (maybe about 100
| years ago or more) didn't consider themselves the agent of
| healing, but rather, assistants in the healing process. It was a
| part of the care for their patients, helping them with the
| continued will to live. Our modern medicine with its metrics
| measures clinical outcomes as if consciousness plays no part in
| outcomes, and our healthcare policies are all formed around this.
|
| The other questions that came to mind ... at the risk of starting
| up something controversial: - How much, if any,
| of the covid-19 deaths are co-morbid with dysexistential
| syndrome? - And how much of the perceived risks to
| vaccination and boosters with covid-19 lead to psychogenic death?
| - How much does the will to survive play in both effects from
| covid-19 and taking vaccines?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I think you're catching downvotes because you touched a current
| third rail, but you're raising valid points regarding things we
| already know about the interaction between human cognitive
| function and health.
|
| If I inject harmless saline into your veins and tell you it's
| poison and will slowly kill you, you will have a physiological
| negative reaction if you believe me, even though the saline
| does nothing to change your biochemistry except some minor
| dilution. Your firm belief will trigger (via poorly understood
| subconscious processes) autonomous responses that will fight an
| attack on your system that isn't there. It's extremely unlikely
| you'll die from something like that, but we've known about the
| placebo effect for a while now, and the nocibo effect (a
| negative reaction because the patient believes the treatment
| causes harm) is also demonstrated in the literature.
|
| I don't doubt that some of the public reports of negative
| effects from the vaccine are psychosomatic nocebo effect. This
| is exactly why raw VAERS statistics are a terrible source of
| information about the actual biological effect of a vaccine
| intervention... Without further information, you can't
| disambiguate negative or positive outcomes caused biologically
| by the vaccine contents from negative or positive outcomes
| caused by psychosomatic reaction.
| hosh wrote:
| Thanks for responding. I havn't caught any downvotes yet (or
| maybe, they disappeared into upvotes). I put that in there
| because I know the subject matter might become a downvote
| magnet ... and if it does, so be it. I'm glad you
| articulating the topic with more precision than I have.
|
| As far as those outcomes goes, I don't think we are
| adequately tracking this, for covid-19 or for other health
| concerns. I have zero idea how much of this influences things
| with covid-19, which is why I am raising these questions. I'm
| more interested in seeing that these questions are asked, and
| whatever answers we find, they are what they are.
|
| My own personal experience is that "psychosomatic" as a term
| has been used to dismiss or handwave those poorly understood
| mechanisms -- not necessarily with covid-19 specifically, but
| more in general. I'm similar to other DIY body hackers, but I
| work more along the lines of working with consciousness
| rather than something like DIY gene therapy. Some of my
| personal experiments yielded some results, and some have not.
| It's part of why these questions came up for me.
| phasnox wrote:
| Anecdata alert: My wife got covid last year.
|
| She was ok until the moment tests confirmed it was covid. She
| developed shortness of breath and other symptoms.
|
| All of those disappeared after reading to her the probabilities
| of hosp. and dying in her age/condition range.
| [deleted]
| bserge wrote:
| bigyellow wrote:
| cyanydeez wrote:
| The real death of a person is the last time anyone thinks about
| them.
| Rygian wrote:
| GNU Terry Pratchett.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Did you know reddit sends out a clacks overhead message?
| HTTP/2 200 OK cache-control: private, s-maxage=0, max-
| age=0, must-revalidate, no-store content-encoding: gzip
| content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8 accept-ranges:
| bytes date: Thu, 06 Jan 2022 13:56:21 GMT via:
| 1.1 varnish vary: Accept-Encoding set-cookie: ses
| sion_tracker=hiqqrhdfgaolpkerpj.0.1641477381482.Z0FBQUFBQmgxd
| lVGQjFmdmhTaU1QdnlBbzdIaUllQ2tMR2daQ2VpVm0tdjlNWWJLNklqWFFlc0
| sweFE4TjE2cmJvZVY3d284MFdaYUhLZl8ydzcwRjdVZERpdGlFU2RSclhiZE9
| vdkFSSzFMZ0NBN0hmQzBPUDJHS1lnZjVhWndaQWhQajlJdk1ySi0; path=/;
| domain=.reddit.com; secure; SameSite=None; Secure
| strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000;
| includeSubdomains x-content-type-options: nosniff
| x-frame-options: SAMEORIGIN x-xss-protection: 1;
| mode=block server: snooserv x-clacks-overhead:
| GNU Terry Pratchett X-Firefox-Spdy: h2
|
| (Response to GET request from https://www.reddit.com/)
|
| Not sure whether to be disappointed or to assume that's like,
| completely unofficial.
| diogenesjunior wrote:
| https://xclacksoverhead.org/home/about
|
| http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/qoqm4x/til_redd
| i...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/2yt9j6/gnu_terr
| y...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ideasfortheadmins/comments/2z0eic/
| a...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/6rls1z/curious_
| a...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/en9eka/i_dont_u
| n...
|
| all good for those who don't understand
| lb0 wrote:
| Romantic but far off topic from what it is about here?
|
| With that, death becomes indeterministic for everybody, because
| unless believing that everything is predetermined, if someone
| will be remembered/thought off again is .. (even with the
| clacks thing btw).
|
| And then also, what about people living, and noone ever
| thinking of them, are they dead too? :s
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| "Depart from me, I never knew you."
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| tell that to someone bleeding out
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| My work essentially involves brainstorming new bacterial
| targets for antibiotics, and over the past couple years this
| idea has crept into my mind.
|
| Science statisticians tend to balk at the placebo effect, and
| use it as kind of a "zero effect". But, I can't help but notice
| how sometimes a placebo (or more generally a positive attitude)
| can actually help a patient overcome an illness.
|
| I've met enough people suffering from terrible bacterial
| infections, and from my eye, the most positive people tend to
| have the best outcomes. Of course, modern science would have my
| head for any mystical thinking.
| scubakid wrote:
| Is it also possible that positivity is physically harder to
| achieve / less likely to manifest for patients whose systems
| are compromised in such a way that they can't overcome the
| infection? We are brain-body systems after all, so to me the
| causality seems hard to untangle.
| spdionis wrote:
| Did the chicken come first or the egg?
| wrp wrote:
| Your observation is not at all new. A famous quote from some
| doctor over a century ago, "Sometimes it's more important who
| has the disease than what disease the patient has."
| [deleted]
| srean wrote:
| This is part of the reason why candidate drugs need to show
| better outcomes over placebo. Placebo has measurable effects
| compared to nocebo.
| robocat wrote:
| > nocebo
|
| Nocebo has measurable negative effects: it is the opposite
| of the placebo effect. Nocebo is health problems or a
| worsening of symptoms, solely due to the conscious or
| subconscious expectation of harm.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo
|
| Highly relevant to Covid vaccinations because
| subconsciously a lot of people fear side effects, so
| perhaps many anecdotal side effects are purely
| psychosomatic. I think psychosomatic symptoms are still
| truely harmful: few people can just decide to think
| themselves better.
| kawera wrote:
| For those like me that know little about the placebo effect,
| there's a nice episode[1] of the On Being by Krista Tippett
| podcast where she interviewed Erik Vance on the subject. His
| book is also very interesting for the uninitiated[2].
|
| [1] https://onbeing.org/programs/erik-vance-the-drugs-inside-
| you...
|
| [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32944584-suggestible-
| you
| TomAbel wrote:
| "When do you think people die? When they are shot through the
| heart by the bullet of a pistol? No. When they are ravaged by
| an incurable disease? No. When they drink a soup made from a
| poisonous mushroom!? No! It's when... they are forgotten."
|
| -- Dr. Hiriluk One Piece(Manga and Anime)
| vsnf wrote:
| In the Dark Souls series, NPCs in the world will succumb to the
| undead curse, that universe's rough equivalent of death, after
| they've become completely satisfied with their life, or have had
| their main purpose fulfilled or removed in some way.
| 1_player wrote:
| Or they have just given up, and turn into mindless Hollows. The
| overarching philosophy of the series being that you will become
| forgotten dust in a world even the Gods have abandoned, yet you
| keep fighting with every ounce of your what little soul remains
| in you.
|
| This oppressively nihilistic atmosphere has given many players
| solace during difficult times.
| adolph wrote:
| This sounds similar to octopus senescence.
|
| _Senescence is not a disease or a result of disease, although
| diseases can also be a symptom of it. Both males and females go
| through a senescent stage before dying-the males after mating,
| the females while brooding eggs and after the eggs hatch._
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7545324_Octopus_Sen...
| scollet wrote:
| There's always ng+!
| Zababa wrote:
| The term for that is "going hollow". This is used in great
| effect in a specific point of the series (in rot13 to not
| spoil):
|
| Gur svany svtug vf ntnvafg Tnry, gung'f orra frnepuvat sbe "gur
| oybbq bs gur qnex fbhy" fb gur tvey gung ur cebgrpgf pna cnvag
| n arj jbeyq. Ur jrag gb gur evatrq pvgl, sbhaq gur cltzvrf gung
| ner fhccbfrq gb pneel gung oybbq, naq sbhaq bhg gung gurve
| oybbq unq eha qel. Fb ur ngr gurz. Jura lbh ernpu unys bs uvf
| UC one, n phgfprar cynlf va juvpu ur oyrrqf ba uvf fjbeq, naq
| fnlf "Vf guvf gur oybbq? Gur oybbq bs gur qnex fbhyf?". Gur
| svtugf fgnegf ntnva, guvf gvzr jvgu Tnry svtugvat abg yvxr na
| raentrq ornfg ohg yvxr n zna ng uvf crnx. Ng guvf cbvag, ur
| nyfb orpbzrf ubyybj. Ur unf nppbzcyvfurq uvf tbny, naq gur ynfg
| guvat gb qb vf gb chg hc n tbbq svtug orsber qlvat sbe gur arj
| jbeyq naq gur tvey.
|
| That was, to me, one of the most touching moment in the series.
| stakkur wrote:
| We often believe the opposite is true, so...why not?
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _As it happened, the woman had been born on Friday the 13th in
| Florida 's Okefenokee Swamp. The midwife who'd delivered her had
| also delivered two other children that day. She told the girls'
| parents that all three children had been hexed. The first girl
| would die before her sixteenth birthday. The second would die
| before her twenty-first. The third--the woman in this hospital--
| would die before she turned twenty-three._
|
| I'm sorry to get off-topic, but what kind of midwife would do
| such a thing? Other than "a character in a made-up story", that
| is.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| One of the interesting aspects of human neurophysiology is that
| our sensory organs and limbic system are intermediated by
| malleable neurons. This is not true of all organisms... Most
| animals have far more direct, mechanical neuron connections
| between their senses and their biological hormonal triggers for
| things like aggression or fear.
|
| This fact is a two-sided coin. On the one side... Brilliant! We
| can change our minds! There is nothing, physically, preventing us
| from becoming our most fearless selves and adapting mentally to
| any circumstance the universe can throw at us.
|
| ... And by the same token, we can become physiologically
| terrified (a fear response with actual hormonal fight or flight
| triggers) over things like open spaces or empty chairs because an
| inconvenient coincidence in the past caused our brains to burn a
| path from sensory input to survival instinct that (once
| established) can be incredibly hard to reset.
|
| The downside to a general purpose computer is you can crash it.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| It confuses me everytime that scientists have such difficulties
| accepting that the mind can have healing or destructive impact on
| the body by means of thoughts and emotions. After all the mind is
| inseperably embedded into the body (first and foremost through
| the brain). Actually accepting this is closer to scientific
| thinking than conjouring up a hypothetic sandbox the mind
| supposedly operates in. Instead the former is usually discarded
| as esoteric. Seems like scientists and physicians are at the end
| of the day just regular folks who happend to have spent a lot of
| time learning about a very small part of reality. Who can blame
| them for their inability to put pieces to gether and see the
| bigger picture.
| grumbel wrote:
| Scientists go by evidence, not anecdote. If people could think
| themselves to death, suicide would be a lot easier to
| accomplish.
|
| Just take the first case, girl goes to a doctor because she is
| out of breath and chest pains, tells him a tale about
| witchcraft, dies. What reason is there to believe that the fear
| of witchcraft made that happen and not all the other symptoms
| that point to an undiagnosed medical condition? Or maybe we
| should just believe witchcraft is real and can make car
| accidents and gun shots happen?
|
| There is no shortage of people who want to die. And no shortage
| of people that do die. Every day. If this would be a real
| thing, it should be possible to come up with some better
| example than stuff that happened many decades or even centuries
| ago.
| fb03 wrote:
| I guess you are correct and I agree with your reasoning, but
| one thing I'd like to add to the discussion as a point is
| that it's difficult to measure in a scientific way the
| proportion of people that 'state' they want to die that
| actually want to die for real. Depression and
| anxiety are very crippling illnesses and there are times that
| people that are burdened by these illnesses really feel like
| they want to die or just disappear or stop "ticking", but
| when faced with a real life chance of that happening (inside
| an airplane with lots of turbulence going on), they shudder
| in terror. Sadly, scientifically measuring that intent vs
| statement to the point we would be able to discern if the
| actual intent alone could trigger bodily changes that would
| enable us to just 'lay down and die' is nigh on impossible,
| unless we find a way around our consciousness (like an out-
| of-ego debug "port") to measure stuff without warning our ego
| that we are measuring stuff. Complicated :-)
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| anecdotal: It's very revealing to be very depressed with
| occasional panic attacks. When depressed, while not
| necessarily wanting to die, I would simply not want to be.
| Yet, sometimes, a panic attack would sneak in and I would
| momentarily (15-60m) be terrified of dying and not being.
| After its passing, it would be straight back to being very
| depressed. It's an awful state of being but illuminating at
| how much brain state matters to perception. It's obvious,
| but experiencing it is jarring.
|
| For the record, I'm doing very well now, thanks SSRIs...
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Doesn't seem strange to me considering the long shadow that
| Cartesian Dualism casts.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Totally agree. It's getting better but people still can't wrap
| their head around the fact that the mind influences the body
| and the body influences the mind in a never ending feedback
| cycle. I guess thinking like this makes the whole system way
| too complex to analyze.
|
| Same happens in economics. Economists often model things based
| on the idea that people make only rational decisions based on
| their own gains and nothing else. The fact that people make
| decisions based on many other factors gets iginredd.
| titanomachy wrote:
| Is this really a common position? Are there prominent
| neuroscientists or physicians who insist that mental activity
| is incapable of enormous influence on the body?
|
| I've heard doctors say things like "she lost the will to live
| after her husband died". And most actual life scientists I know
| have a healthy regard for the limits of our knowledge.
|
| Some of my fellow software engineers, on the other hand...
| yccs27 wrote:
| Mental effects are unfortunately pretty hard to measure
| reliably or even control, so people trying to do "cold hard
| science" tend to disregard it. It is easy to write off claims
| as unscientific if they are hard to replicate in lab
| conditions, but it does not mean they are necessarily false.
| jcims wrote:
| Yes, it even has a name. Placebo effect.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| > Is this really a common position? Are there prominent
| neuroscientists or physicians who insist that mental activity
| is incapable of enormous influence on the body?
|
| Individual doctors may say it, but as an industry, it is
| largely ignored.
|
| They'll say it, but they'll rarely act on it in any
| meaningful way.
| [deleted]
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| The larger conceit is simply that we are intuitively all
| kind of Cartesian, despite ourselves. It is structurally
| difficult not to be. I think its reasonable for even
| scientists in this field to not fully escape its
| psychological and cultural grasp.
| torbital wrote:
| > After all the mind is inseperably embedded into the body
| (first and foremost through the brain).
|
| People will gloss over this, as this is the common western
| view, but it should be noted that this is not how it is.
|
| Your body is contained in your mind. Your universe is contained
| within your mind. All of this is simply the contents of your
| mind.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| I fail to understand how many physicalists have trouble
| understanding just what kind of influence the mind has on the
| body.
|
| You know, it all being the same.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Placebo is routinely used and corrected for in studies, so your
| assumption is false.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| No, OP is absolutely correct. We have open-label studies come
| out all the time (one posted here a few days ago about a long
| covid treatment) making grandiose claims and not taking into
| account the placebo effect at all. And many physicians and
| scientists are particularly bad at this, believing that
| stress and emotions can't cause significant physical illness.
| I can't count the number I've talked to who have bizarre
| ideas about this, including many of the top scientists
| working on certain diseases (of which I've suffered myself).
| I'm not going to post any examples here as I don't want to
| get into a mud slinging match.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| idk, scientists have known that the mind influences the body
| (placebo/nocebo effect, physical symptoms passed off as
| anxiety, stress worse than smoking), and poor physical health
| lead to pains and energy issues as well as the gut-brain
| connection. I don't think anyone doubts that good mental health
| leads to good physical health and vice versa.
|
| But your mind cannot perform miracles. Most of the examples in
| this article and others are likely coincidences. There are many
| people who desperately wanted to kill themselves but couldn't,
| and people who by all means should have wanted to live but
| unexpectedly passed away.
|
| _Kind of_ like how the mind is inseparable from the body,
| science is inseparable from human bias and fallacies.
| allemagne wrote:
| On the other hand, the subject of certain chronic illnesses
| seems to be characterized by very real suffering followed by
| frustration at modern medicine for insisting on
| psychosomaticism as a leading hypothesis.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| For real. This is a subject that I find immensely fascinating
| and endlessly exciting. It's massive and we're barely starting
| to figure out that there's a surface we can even scratch (even
| though some segments of study have been shouting about it for
| some time, even if they've been a bit inaccurate or clumsy
| about it).
|
| The more I learn, the less I seem to know.
|
| For example:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0026265X2...
|
| https://www.pnas.org/content/113/31/8753
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5433113/
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I dunno, I can't imagine these biophotons having any effect
| when there are so many other major influences... Crazy to
| see, thanks for sharing.
| kranke155 wrote:
| These articles are weird and amazing, thanks for sharing. Do
| share if you have more.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| I'm really _just_ stumbling onto the material elements of
| the subject after some shameless deep dives into the weird
| but sensical.
|
| What staggers me, because maybe it makes it see more real,
| is that biophotons are increasingly being witnessed as
| local and non-local information carriers. In humans, but
| not just in humans.
| (https://www.nature.com/articles/srep36508, http://www.u.ar
| izona.edu/~kcreath/pdf/pubs/2005_KC_GES_SPIE_...,
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30381897/,
| http://www.rrp.infim.ro/2008_60_3/43-885-898.pdf --probably
| a lot of crossover between these, I haven't read them
| through)
|
| I'm ultimately ignorant, but when you put that information
| beside some of the other weirdness we see in frontier
| physics or start to consider what that kind of thing means
| on various time scales and the questions that start to
| arise are eye opening.
|
| It's the realm of philosophy that takes the range of
| information into account that really thrills me, but
| understanding some of the mechanics will open up new
| possibilities that are really exciting (if its a bit early
| to get that excited). Whatever. I find it exciting, and
| sometimes I'm amazed more people don't find it more
| exciting.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| Every cell in a living system is evolving in a feedback
| loop with every single aspect of its environment. Every
| systematic influcence of any kind will become a signal
| and impact development and progression of that cell. In
| other words if life forms radiate photons that can be
| received by other life forms then in the long run this
| will exert some sort of evolutionary pressure to use that
| signal in some way which will then cause evolutionary
| pressure to make use of that signal with regard to its
| emission. Take anything. So if there are quantum effects
| on atoms and hence cells, then it makes sense to
| hypothesize that systematic utilization will have
| evolved. I find this totally intuitive. And yet, even
| educated people will laugh at you for formulating such a
| farfetched idea.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| In deed - that's some interesting rabbit hole to descend
| down into ... "biophotons" and "ultra-weak photon emission"
| - wtf
| Kranar wrote:
| On the contrary it gives me a great deal of confidence that
| there is no scientific consensus on this subject based on how
| intuitive or how obvious it seems, and that instead scientists
| are hesitant to come to a consensus without experimental
| evidence.
|
| I think plenty of physicians have personal opinions and
| hypotheses about the impact of the brain on the body, but it's
| something incredibly difficult to validate or refute,
| experiments are very hard to carry out on this subject, and
| consequently the responsible thing for a scientist to do is to
| avoid making conclusions or coming to a consensus on the basis
| of how nice or appealing something sounds.
|
| If you want to hold a personal opinion on the subject, go for
| it... if that opinion inspires you to pursue an interest and
| develop a testable theory... wonderful do it. Until then, from
| a professional point of view it's best to avoid perpetuating an
| idea, no matter how strongly you believe it to be, as a well
| established scientific fact.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Just because science has not or cannot proven a concept, does
| not mean that concept is not real. That's not the same as
| disproving a concept though science.
|
| Don't let double-blind, placebo controlled, peer reviewed
| studies with sufficient n limit your understanding of
| reality. There are aspects of reality which have not been and
| never will be tested with the scientific method.
| Kranar wrote:
| I never said anything about proving or disproving. People
| are welcome to believe anything they'd like to on whatever
| basis they choose to... if you like Chinese medicine, go
| for it. Think drinking that awful cough medicine will make
| you feel better? Fine... Want to see a naturopath or
| chiropractor to perform vertebral subluxation to cure your
| back pain? Have at it... All of these practices sound very
| convincing, intuitive, and are almost common sense to
| billions of people, and I'm glad that professional doctors
| and scientists reject them regardless of how appealing they
| sound because none of them can be experimentally verified.
|
| The fact that they are rejected does not mean that they
| don't work or have been proven to be ineffective, it means
| that they are not established scientific facts and as such
| it's absolutely dangerous to have physicians or other
| scientists promoting ideas as scientific fact or using said
| ideas as the basis for their professional practice.
| barrenko wrote:
| In many spiritual practices as well, the mind is a parasite on
| the body (good and bad stuff equally count).
| lambdaba wrote:
| Everybody should check out Joe Dispenza's work with an open
| mind. He basically teaches people to use placebo consciously.
| swayvil wrote:
| People wait to get sick on the weekend, or on vacation. That's a
| common example of this phenomenon.
| stared wrote:
| I have had it a lot. But I guess it is all about drop of
| adrenaline - i.e. symptoms where masked, and body finally had
| time to rest a bit.
| can16358p wrote:
| I'm wondering what could really prevent this for someone thinking
| they will surely die at some time. Someone close to me (who
| doesn't have a physiological illness) literally/obsessively
| thinks that she'll die at the age 40 (5 years to go) and I have
| trouble convincing her that she won't. After reading this, I'm
| more concerned. Any recommendations?
| klipt wrote:
| If she believes she's under a voodoo curse or something, maybe
| the best psychological treatment is to get her voodoo-uncursed,
| by a witchdoctor, or priest of her favorite religion, or via
| some other ritual. E.g. get her friends together to ritually
| form a "ring of protection" around her and go around 3 times to
| triple her time from 40 to 120 years.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| She needs to stop being afraid of fear.
|
| This is the basis for all anxiety disorders. Fear of fear. You
| get into loop where you're literally scared of fear itself.
|
| The solution is simple, death is scary. So what?
|
| She will need to force herself to sit with that fear and become
| indifferent about it or even learn to like it in some way if
| possible. Similar to exposure with phobic people, or ignoring
| behaviors with OCD.
|
| I'd recommend reading Claire Weeks Hope and Help for Your
| Nerves.
|
| Also, I'd recommend not playing this game of convincing her she
| won't die. She's probably habituated some sort of compulsive
| behavior of trying to release the fear by asking you to sooth
| it (pretty similar to OCD handwashing when you think about it).
| You're only reinforcing her behavior.
| titanomachy wrote:
| Has she considered doing a month-long silent retreat, or
| mediated psychedelic therapy? Both have the potential to
| significantly restructure a person's belief system.
|
| They're not without risks, but if you really think the
| alternative is that she dies in five years...
| neurobashing wrote:
| One of the things they told us in infantry school was, "if you
| get shot, don't die", meaning: don't immediately think that
| you're dead, because experience has shown that you might actually
| die from a survivable wound if you _think_ you're a goner.
| eitland wrote:
| We were taught: never ever say someone is not going to make it.
|
| The hearing can work even if no other senses work they told us
| and if I understood it correctly they meant these words could
| make the wounded person give up.
| redanddead wrote:
| Wow... I mean armed forces all over the world recognize the
| concept of morale. I feel like there are aspects of that that
| we miss out on in everyday life, like in the media for
| example, concepts like "doom scrolling", and constant focus
| on bad news. I don't know
| laurent92 wrote:
| At the same time, I find cruel to tell a guy who's dying
| that he's going to make it. Also, often, not listen to his
| last wills "because he's gonna make it". Sometimes you just
| would like to go in peace, tell the good old stories, and
| say "That was a nice life. Thanks."
| iSnow wrote:
| I suspect the background is that the others do not want
| to face the death of one of their pals. Without some
| evidence, I doubt someone unconscious would die from a
| "he ain't gonna make it" - it's at least as likely his
| mates want to do something positive. Kind of a
| superstition that if they give him up, he'll die.
| goodlinks wrote:
| Similar thing taught for offshor survival training in the north
| sea.
|
| If you give up you are a gonner if you dont you _may_ make it,
| and everyone who has survived had a determination to struggle
| on even when it looked bleak (i think the stats say something
| like if you are not out of the water in 5 mins you are unlikely
| to survive - even with a survival suit.)
|
| They show videos of people passing out as they are airlifted
| out of the sea too and falling out of the sling. or passing out
| and drowning when they see the helicopter overhead - assuming
| that they dont need to fight any more.
| 1_player wrote:
| Reminds me of the documentary film Last Breath, telling the
| story of deep sea diver Chris Lemons.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Maybe the documentary tells more, but I just read a bbc
| piece on him and it seems like he gave up:
|
| > He remembered: "I think once I accepted there was no hope
| of survival, I was powerless to do anything to save myself.
| A quiet resignation came over me."
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-
| shetl...
| 1_player wrote:
| In that case it seems giving up instead of panicking
| might save what precious little oxygen you have left.
| eitland wrote:
| > i think the stats say something like if you are not out of
| the water in 5 mins you are unlikely to survive - even with a
| survival suit.
|
| Obviously take those statistics with a grain of salt.
|
| According to some stats you can survive one minute in icy
| water.
|
| Yet many people enjoy swimming in the ice, including some who
| can stay in the icy water for 15 minutes or more just for
| kicks.
| praptak wrote:
| To die within one minute means the cold shock killed you,
| not hypothermia: https://gcaptain.com/cold_water/
| frenchyatwork wrote:
| I imagine these stats have a lot more to do with the
| roughness of the water than the temperature. Rough water
| can be extremely difficult and stressful to stay up in,
| especially if you're not used to it.
|
| Also, if you get tossed off a boat in the North Sea,
| chances are that the water is not very calm.
| dkarl wrote:
| It can depend on the individual, too. There's an
| interesting book called Swimming to Antarctica, which is a
| memoir by Lynne Cox, an incredible long-distance swimmer
| who discovered she had a talent for cold water and who
| (after extensive preparation) swam five miles in sub-40o
| water.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Thanks! I didn't know of Lynne Cox until you mentioned
| her.
|
| I don't mean this unkindly, but I notice in the photos
| that she was a bit heavy. Was that considered a factor in
| her ability to withstand the cold?
| 0_____0 wrote:
| In interviews she refers to her fat as "blubber." [1]
|
| She's a fantastic writer too, I found this piece she
| wrote from the New Yorker, definitely worth a read[2]
|
| [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-body-fat-helps-this-
| elite-a...
|
| [2] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/21/a-dip-
| in-the-c...
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Maybe they just want you to avoid being a distraction to other
| soldiers in the heat of battle. Crying out for your mother
| can't be good for morale.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| mellavora wrote:
| No, from what I've read, the problem was the reverse. SOP is
| if you are shot, first, don't die, second, get evacuated back
| to medical care.
|
| because soldiers were taking survivable hits, but staying on
| with their buddies in the firefight while slowly bleeding out
| until the hit became much less survivable.
| t8y wrote:
| It could be other things though. Perhaps those that think they
| are going to die have reacted badly to injuries in the past,
| they are subconsciously aware that the injury is more serious
| to them than someone else (or that the injury is more serious
| than it seems). A over the top example is people that eat
| peanuts and think they are going to die are more likely to die
| and instead of attributing this to them having a deadly allergy
| saying it's because they thought they were going to die.
| mellavora wrote:
| I saw an interesting stat on this, in an article looking at
| 'which bullet caliber has the most stopping power' by looking
| at data from real shooting incidents (mostly police records).
|
| If I remember right, the conclusion was that 50% of the time,
| it didn't matter what the caliber was. The person got hit,
| realized they'd been shot, thought they were supposed to fall
| down, and then did.
|
| The other 50% did come down to the bullet caliber, lining up
| pretty much as you'd expect, along with some interesting
| stories of people who took mortal wounds from high-caliber
| rounds and kept fighting for a few minutes.
| pengaru wrote:
| > 50% of the time, it didn't matter what the caliber was. The
| person got hit, realized they'd been shot, thought they were
| supposed to fall down, and then did
|
| Something that surprised me when watching the NZ masque
| terrorism shooter's first-person video was how uniformly
| everyone shot immediately collapsed. It looked fake like a
| Hollywood movie, except it was real.
|
| I have no firsthand experience with people being shot, but
| based on that particular footage my impression is people tend
| to go down hard immediately.
| aenis wrote:
| I once got kicked by a horse (shoed) and collapsed just as
| soon as I located help. Until then I was able to keep
| moving despite 5 bones being broken, and piercing through
| my skin, including a major nerve dangling on the outside.
| Most eye opening experience of my life.
| mediocregopher wrote:
| I'd like to think I'm someone who would fight to live, as
| is being discussed in this thread. But at the same time, in
| a situation like that where I'm completely unprepared to be
| shot at, I think immediately collapsing is probably the
| right strategy. If I keep struggling to escape I'm just
| gonna get shot again.
| sekh60 wrote:
| I am thinking back to the quote from Dune: "you've heard
| of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap. there's an
| animal kind of trick. a human would remain in the trap
| endure the pain feigning death that he might kill the
| trapper and remove a threat to his kind."
| pengaru wrote:
| > But at the same time, in a situation like that where
| I'm completely unprepared to be shot at, I think
| immediately collapsing is probably the right strategy. If
| I keep struggling to escape I'm just gonna get shot
| again.
|
| In the video the shooter fires repeatedly into the piles
| of collapsed bodies, and there's a disturbing lack of
| reactions. Folks survived but I suspect most of those
| were just lucky to be shielded by others who weren't so
| lucky.
| lm28469 wrote:
| As far as I understand any rifle bullet of reasonable size
| hitting center of mass will make you go down unless you're
| incredibly lucky and it doesn't hit anything of value.
|
| Imagine a peak Mike Tyson punch to the liver / lungs /
| kidneys / &c. that's if it doesn't straight up break your
| spine
|
| https://youtu.be/6hJZdtPcVdE?t=55
| zhengyi13 wrote:
| Trigger warning: ugly considerations ahead.
|
| I have not watched the footage of the NZ shooting. I just
| wanted to speak to some considerations that might drive
| sudden collapse. Mechanically, there's two things I'd point
| at:
|
| First, a bullet wound to the heart itself, or close enough
| (see next point) can effectively be an off switch, in the
| sense that you're blowing out the hydraulic system feeding
| blood to the brain. Suddenly loss of flow and pressure
| means no oxygen getting supplied to the brain; when that
| happens, willpower and mindset don't mean anything.
|
| Secondly, a rifle round tends to be moving at least twice
| the speed of a pistol round, bringing with it significantly
| more kinetic energy and hydrostatic shock, creating a much
| larger wound channel, more likely blowing out a critical
| system and/or delivering massive shock to various organs.
| manatbar384 wrote:
| I read this as infant School meaning I thought you meant like
| primary school. Was wondering wtf how intense is your junior
| curriculum?!
| drcongo wrote:
| Standard for American schools.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| That's just the newfangled word for preparatory pre-
| kindergarten.
| warsoco wrote:
| lol same
| adolph wrote:
| It's an important part of the Active Shooter workshops taught
| in most schools and workplaces but it isn't tested very
| often.
| amelius wrote:
| Placebo effect is stronger than most people think, also works
| the other way.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| We were training with simunition (paint rounds) and were told
| something similar. They said that if you're hit with sim rounds
| ignore it because if you fall down when you're hit in training
| you'll instinctively fall down when hit with real rounds.
|
| Ten minutes later I was the point man while pushing upstairs
| and must have been hit about 10 times and I ignored it like
| Superman.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Sim rounds hurt, too. I think they should be more common as a
| training tool, because they hurt more than actually getting
| shot.
| kodah wrote:
| That's also why we separate bodies into different categories
| during a mass casualty event. If someone who was shot sees the
| body of someone missing multiple appendages, they can go
| downhill real fast.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Literal survivorship bias?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Yup, but with the opposite lesson. Giving up is a death
| sentence. Not giving up also is probably a death sentence,
| but it's not an absolute certainty.
| javajosh wrote:
| _Littoral_ survivorship bias.
| [deleted]
| rob_c wrote:
| I've heard that a few times. I wonder what the stats on the
| effectiveness of that are (the military tends to be great for
| record keeping)
| watwut wrote:
| I doubt they are able to accurately measure mental state of
| wounded soldiers in the middle of fight. And keep track of
| those records.
| samstave wrote:
| I'm mostly talking out my ass on this one, but thought I
| would share...
|
| My brother is a doctor (CMO of the largest health system in
| a state, he was previously head of the Veterans
| administration for said state, Commander of the 10th
| medical wing in the USAF (he's a ret. Colonel - gave up the
| General track) , personal flight surgeon to the joint
| chiefs at the dod... etc...)
|
| I asked him recently about covid related use of the ICU
| rooms at his facility...
|
| and I was stunned that he answered that "we don't keep
| records of that"
|
| I had been asking about who was vaxxed and not - and he
| said that he had several people who were vaxxed and got
| covid and also died, the youngest being 30, who was vaxxed
| but also one of his employees at the hospital.
|
| The point though is just how much I was surprised at the
| statement that they aren't keeping records....
|
| He was a field surgeon in Iraq, but I haven't talked to him
| about that experience much...
| iak8god wrote:
| > I asked him recently about covid related use of the ICU
| rooms at his facility... and I was stunned that he
| answered that "we don't keep records of that"
|
| What your brother means is that he hasn't encountered a
| medical or financial reason to request those reports run
| yet. The data is 100% being collected.
| samstave wrote:
| obv... I cant give up too many more details than this,
| but still -- I can see through it... lots of reasons I
| can't say... (I fucking got cease-and-desisted in the
| past based on comments here...)
| watwut wrote:
| I find that odd. Here they do track covid ICU nationally
| and covid even have them separated (they don't mix covid
| patients with car crashes). The lockdown was because
| capacities were getting full.
|
| And they also know who is vaccinated, so the general
| claim doctors were saying was that vaccinated seldom end
| up in ICU and very rarely die. Most in serious condition
| are unvaccinated.
|
| Causes of death tend to be tracked on national level too.
| It might be that hospital does not care, but death
| certificates for all kinda of stuff should be written
| somewhere.
| [deleted]
| daxfohl wrote:
| The very first episode of This American Life was about an
| instance where someone convinced himself for a year that he was
| going to die on a specific day, and then, didn't.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| You also see this with long term couples.
|
| When a husband or wife of 40 to 50 years dies, many times it
| seems the surviving spouse dies within the year, even when they
| were healthy at the time of death of the first spouse.
| jorgesborges wrote:
| I worked in a retirement home and sometimes witnessed the
| inverse: a husband or wife dies (more often a husband) and the
| surviving spouse feels liberated and rejuvenated as if decades
| of weight have been lifted, and they spring to life making new
| friends and appear generally more happy and healthy.
|
| It's still a processes -- there's a period of grief and
| adjustment but I've seen it happen a few times.
| ModernMech wrote:
| This happened to my grandparents. My grandmother was a kind of
| hypochondriac who had been claiming she was on the verge of
| death for 30 years. But she wasn't without health problems --
| overweight, diabetic, smoker. But she kept going, nevertheless.
| Then my grandfather died, and she followed about a year later.
| I really can't help but think he was keeping her going at the
| end.
| watwut wrote:
| Do you gave source for that? cause there are too many old
| widows for me to believe the couples often die around the same
| time.
|
| And I did not noticed this pattern in cemetery either.
| daviddaviddavid wrote:
| This seems to have been how one of my favorite composers, Arnold
| Schoenberg, died.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schoenberg#Superstition...
| NoGravitas wrote:
| I expect that as the Jackpot progresses, we'll see a lot more
| people dying of dysexistential syndrome, even making up a
| substantial proportion of the death toll from climate-related
| disasters, crop failures, pandemics, and wars.
| rob_c wrote:
| You mean someone can die from turning themselves into a nervous
| wreck?... Someone phone Hollywood I've got a plot idea!
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Legitimately, this seems to be the result of MSNBC/CNN/FOX. A
| persistent source of existential anxiety.
|
| I'm not even sure that's their intention -- maybe it is. But
| it's certainly the result.
| rob_c wrote:
| Yeah, fear sells unfortunately
| jerf wrote:
| At this point, it is their intention whether it is or not,
| because they can't be unaware of their effect.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| For anyone who doesn't follow I assume your reference to the
| "Jackpot" is a reference to the William Gibson novel "The
| peripheral" and its sequel where a vague, not disclosed to the
| reader series of disasters wipes out most of Earth's population
| in the 21st century. In the novels human society seems to have
| gotten too complex to be run by humans without such disasters.
| The only solution may be to create benevolent A.I. to run
| things for us.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Mmmh, no, the Jackpot (in the Peripheral) was mostly climate-
| related, not due to excessive social complexity. The series
| of disasters is left vague because no one disaster by itself
| was very important. AI isn't very important to the story,
| either; the post-Jackpot society is run by kleptocrats.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| I'm pretty confident they never indicate The Jackpot is
| mostly climate related in The Peripheral. It's a number of
| vague things like disease and climate change and war-- not
| any single thing.
|
| Also there's a review of the second book in the series,
| Agency, which convincingly argues the theme of the latter
| book is, given increasing human social complexity, we need
| an A.I. to tell us what to do. I think it was this review
| that I read which argues it:
|
| https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/how-i-learned-to-
| sto...
|
| "What we lack in the present moment is what Fredric Jameson
| called a cognitive map of the world. Such a map would be a
| guide to our world's vast, ever-increasing complexity, so
| that reality might again be grasped and understood. This is
| what Eunice provides. She supplements human consciousness
| with the ability to understand our immense world and thus
| act intelligently within it. Finally, here is someone who
| knows what she's doing. In this sense, superintelligent AI
| is a huge relief."
|
| Also, per the second book kleptocrats aren't really running
| things, the A.I. enhanced "post human" character Lowbeer is
| the only one keeping things stable. She can expand her
| lifespan through technology for a while but not
| indefinitely. When she's gone one day things are bound to
| get ugly.
|
| Even in the first book The Peripheral it's pretty clear the
| Kleptocrats are using predictive A.I. to prevent any
| threats to their power.
| musesum wrote:
| A relevant read is "The Molecule of More ...", which explored the
| function of Dopamine in great detail
|
| [1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/38728977
| andrepew wrote:
| If a person is identified as susceptible to this, do we need to
| revisit the current standards in medical ethics?
|
| If telling someone of their diagnosis is a substantial risk to
| their health, should they be told? Should doctors always
| communicate a poor prognosis?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| No we shouldn't revisit ethics, and yes doctors should always
| communicate prognosis.
|
| Patient benefit should never be a singular goal to the
| exclusion of all else.
|
| Even if it were, there are significant downstream effects to
| reducing the trust in medical professionals
| stared wrote:
| > As it happened, the first girl was killed in a car accident on
| the day before her sixteenth birthday. The second girl made it to
| her twenty-first birthday. She thought the spell was broken, so
| she went out to celebrate, but at the bar a fight broke out, a
| gun went off, and she was also killed.
|
| I am skeptical. Did they write down this hex _before_ the deaths
| happened?
| drcongo wrote:
| I stopped reading at the end of that obviously fake anecdote,
| how much credibility can the rest of the article have if they
| actually believe that story.
| grungegun wrote:
| The doctors don't believe the story. The woman does. The
| doctors believe that the woman's belief caused her early
| death, but that's independent of whether they accept that
| story as true - people (the woman) can convince themselves of
| a lot of things.
| drewcon wrote:
| I'm not sure I need to add "thinking myself to death" to my list
| of worries today.
| grouphugs wrote:
| lelag wrote:
| The opposite effect has often been observed too. People with a
| mission will often managed to survive much longer than expected
| but then suddenly die as soon as they perceive to have
| accomplished that mission.
|
| An example that comes to my mind is that of Marcel Proust, who
| was sickly and suffered declining health for years. In the last
| three years of his life, we worked relentlessly on La Recherche,
| his life work. He managed to finish the last volume and died
| shortly after.
|
| I'm sure there are many others.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Would the legend of the ancient Greek messenger count? They
| raced from the site of Marathon to Athens a distance of 26.2
| miles to deliver the message of a pending invasion then
| collapsed and died.
| phkahler wrote:
| Charles M. Schulz died on the Saturday night before his last
| Peanuts strip ran in the Sunday papers.
|
| https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2020/02/12/first-a...
|
| He had Cancer, but I think he picked the timing.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| You don't even need to die for that; I think a lot of people
| have experienced a situation at least once in their life where
| after a period of intense work or stress, or not long after
| their vacation starts, they got sick. I'm not talking about
| being overworked so much, but flu-like symptoms.
|
| It's like your mind finally allows your body (and mind?) to
| relax, and it finally processes a lot of things it's been
| saving up. This isn't a very scientific comment, very
| anecdotal, but I believe it's not uncommon.
| borplk wrote:
| You can also think of that as an evolutionary advantage.
|
| Your biology delays the illness until you are more ready to
| handle it.
| nirav72 wrote:
| > not long after their vacation starts, they got sick
|
| This was discussed just couple of weeks ago in this thread:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29644949
| tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote:
| Under stress the body increases cortisol production to keep
| the energy level up and remain alert. When the stress
| subsides, the cortisol production is reduced to normal and
| the suppressed ills break out.
| purpleflame1257 wrote:
| I would regularly catch a "flu" during spring break
| (immediately post-midterms) despite just hanging out at my
| apartment. This explains why.
| macNchz wrote:
| For people prone to migraines it is also common that attacks
| will coincide with time off: weekends or the beginning of
| vacations.
|
| https://www.webmd.com/balance/stress-
| management/news/2001030...
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Heart attacks in the first year after retirement are a thing
| too:
|
| "Among 5,422 individuals in the study, those who had retired
| were 40% more likely to have had a heart attack or stroke
| than those who were still working. The increase was more
| pronounced during the first year after retirement, and
| leveled off after that."
|
| https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/is-retirement-good-
| for-h...
| bell-cot wrote:
| "...those who had retired were 40% more likely to have had
| a heart attack _or stroke_... " (italics added)
|
| My first thought - many retirees' daily routines suddenly
| included far more / longer periods of inactivity. Which
| changed their potential health issues related to blood
| clots into very real health issues related to blood clots.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Maybe. In a few months to a year though?
| hvs wrote:
| People retiring aren't exactly in the primes of their
| lives. Suddenly becoming more sedentary at 65 years old
| could put enormous stress on your body.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Did they account for the 'sick quitter' bias? I know of
| people who were forced into retirement due to ill health
| and died shortly thereafter, but I have a hard time buying
| the idea that quitting work is somehow bad for you if it's
| something you've always wanted.
| bitwize wrote:
| My mom's dementia set in about a year after she retired.
| Before that she was in a deep depression.
|
| I'm reasonably certain that when one of my parents dies,
| the other will soon follow.
| nabilhat wrote:
| Retirement is quite stressful for many. Suddenly having to
| come up with something to do every single day can cause
| anxiety. Most of us have recent experience with how
| stressful it can be to simply not visit a familiar group of
| people every day. The loss of stability of the 5x8 routine
| can cause anxiety, which may be a tipping point for
| borderline health issues. The loss of accountability can
| tip vices as well. Weekend drinkers don't always
| responsibly handle every day suddenly being a Saturday.
| [deleted]
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| This is an incredible statistic, and quite counter
| intuitive.... Goes to show that stress can come from any
| kind of change, even if that change seems to remove a major
| amount of expected work
|
| Perhaps weaning off of work would be better than cold
| turkey retiring?
| jl6 wrote:
| Stress is very much not the same thing as work. My
| experience is that the most stressful times for me are
| the times when I'm suffering uncertainty over what I
| should do, or have a seemingly irreconcilable conflict of
| priorities, or when someone is in a bad situation and I
| can't do anything. The least stressful times are when I'm
| in the zone working hard ("work" being anything that
| needs focus, so might include play!).
| bachmeier wrote:
| The stress can be particularly bad for those that had no
| choice but to retire (due to health, job loss, or other
| reasons). Moving from working for money, and potentially
| being able to increase your income if needed, to a fixed
| income is tough for most people. Particularly if it was a
| sudden retirement and they realize the full implications
| of that after they retire.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I often wonder whether the causation is backwards for
| these stats. After all many people retire because of ill
| health.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Perhaps people retire because they are starting to get
| too sick to work.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| There's also the example of people who die on their 100th
| birthday - their mission was to make it to that age.
| agumonkey wrote:
| There's a similar factor with relationships. Some people hold
| on until they can see sibling/SO one last time. Then they
| expire.
| thr0waway2 wrote:
| The Bogdanoff twins recently died within a week of each other
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| There are numerous such stories, but I tend to think it's more
| selection bias than anything.
|
| Accomplished people are almost always accomplishing things,
| even into late life. By definition, the last thing they
| accomplish is their final accomplishment. Even if deaths were
| randomly distributed, you'd expect to find a lot of these
| people dying shortly after finishing their last accomplishment.
| lelag wrote:
| It does not need to about doing something incredible. Older
| couples are known to live longer than surviving spouse whose
| life-long partner has passed away. https://journals.plos.org/
| plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
|
| I don't find it too hard to believe that someone with a
| reason to live will actually live longer than someone without
| one...
| jl6 wrote:
| Agreed, but I also wonder whether the couple situation
| increases survival because they've got someone to watch
| their back, e.g. if one has a fall, the other is there to
| call for help.
| joconde wrote:
| Or they do it themselves by getting depressed and not
| taking care of themselves. Physical exercise and healthy
| meals take motivation.
| perfecthjrjth wrote:
| Add Karlheinz Deschner to the list. He published the final
| (10th) volume of "Kriminalgeschichte des
| Christentums(Christianity's Criminal History)" in late 2013. 6
| months later, he passed away.
| colanderman wrote:
| The classic (and likely apocryphal) story is that of
| Pheidippides, whence came the term "marathon":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheidippides#Story
| badrabbit wrote:
| Betty white passing on 31st
| gadders wrote:
| I think this also happens to boxers who sadly die in the ring.
| They keep going beyond normal limits, driven by their will to
| win.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Boxers who die in the ring or shortly after usually either:
| didn't have enough time to rehydrate after cutting weight,
| were fighting too soon after taking a lot of damage, or were
| in a too-long fight. In almost all cases they've been failed
| by their corner, and often the commission.
| gadders wrote:
| That explains why they die, but not how they kept going
| when they were dying. I always remember the Nigel
| Benn/Gerard McClellan fight when he was touching his head
| after being stopped, and then collapsed in the corner.
| slx26 wrote:
| David Bowie with his last album might qualify.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| I actually was concerned about byuu/near after the release of
| the Bahamut Lagoon translation for that very reason.
| journey_16162 wrote:
| I have seen the opposite effect in my grandmother. She is
| definitely not on a mission. She just wants to live as long as
| she could, despite outliving pretty much everyone her age group
| and also her children. She's never been saying "when I'm
| gone..." or stuff like that, like it was not a possibility. But
| she often liked to say to other people something along "don't
| do this or you will die" - i.e. "don't work too hard because
| you will die". People much younger than her. Never said
| something like that in context of herself. The only exception
| is recently, after my father's death she asked my mother: "will
| you take care of my funeral?" but then she shortly added "if
| you live long enough that is" or something like that. My mom is
| 58 and grandma is 93.
|
| I think it's a bit like ego thing and positive feedback loop.
| She takes pride in her longevity.
| Swizec wrote:
| Hopefully I'm like your grandma. My phrasing (since beating a
| severe teen depression) has always been "If I ever die ..."
|
| At 34, if I get rich enough in the next 30 years, it may in
| fact become optional. That would be cool
| salmonfamine wrote:
| I hope everyone on this planet dies. No one should live
| forever.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Nobody could ever live _forever_ no matter what happens,
| but we might prevent people from dying from one specific
| cause (old age), if they don 't want to.
| hackingthelema wrote:
| That's a pretty grim statement. You want everyone to die?
| Would you mind unpacking this a bit?
|
| I'd like this material existence I am currently
| experiencing to have no end (i.e., I hope I never die),
| so this comes as a shock. I can understand not wanting
| yourself to live forever, but wanting _everyone_ to die?
| mediocregopher wrote:
| Life (with a capital "L", the entire phenomenon, not the
| life of an individual organism) is predicated on death
| and birth in order to adapt and persist. Without death
| there is no adaptation, without adaptation Life will
| perish.
|
| We humans sometimes forget we're a part of Life, but we
| are, and we benefit from death just as much as the rest
| of Life.
| licebmi__at__ wrote:
| Yeah, I would like to adapt enough to overcome death.
| xvector wrote:
| Why is adaptation more important than life itself? The
| responses in this thread are so callous. Would you tell a
| loved one that they need to die so humanity can "adapt?"
|
| If confronted with a society of people that live forever,
| but are relatively stagnant, would you propose to them
| that they all kill themselves every 80 years or so, so
| they "adapt?"
|
| Why is adaptation more important than a life? A life is
| incredibly precious. Evolutionary adaptation barely works
| anymore and the cost in blood is immeasurable. Otherwise,
| adaptation can be achieved easily with technology,
| _without_ costing so many people their hopes, dreams, and
| existence.
| hackingthelema wrote:
| Humans adapt all of the time without death or birth. We
| call it invention and innovation.
| klipt wrote:
| Ever heard the phrase "science progresses one funeral at
| a time"?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
| xvector wrote:
| Why is scientific progress more important than life
| itself?
|
| Would you tell a society of immortals living in an
| idyllic and peaceful village that they need to die "for
| science?"
|
| Societal issues can be solved without science. Once you
| tackle scarcity and long+healthy lives, science becomes
| much less important.
|
| Anyways, the pace of scientific progress is irrelevant if
| you live forever. You would experience infinitely more
| net progress if you were immortal.
| hackingthelema wrote:
| I have, but that is just one point of view, which I
| happen to disagree with. Given a mortal life, you have to
| cling to what you can carve out. You're going to die and
| your current ideas are all you're going to get; anyone
| who overthrows them is a threat to your 'legacy'.
|
| With an immortal life -- assuming physical decay is
| arrested with immortality -- you have endless time to
| reconsider your ideas and expand on them using your
| wealth of knowledge and experience.
|
| I don't see Planck's principle as inevitable, but an
| aberration that we can cure.
| mediocregopher wrote:
| Are you 100% sure that the "set of all changes we'll have
| to adapt to" is a subset of "set of all changes we can
| invent our way out of"?
|
| I'd also challenge the idea that innovation happens
| outside of death and birth. It often takes a new pair of
| eyes to see a new solution to a problem.
| hackingthelema wrote:
| Yes, because we also control physical adaptation to a
| degree. Human adaptation has been disconnected from
| physical evolution for a long time now. How many type-1
| diabetics only live now because of changes we invented
| our way out of?
|
| > It often takes a new pair of eyes to see a new solution
| to a problem.
|
| Why does this require death of current people and not
| simply more eyes that already exist?
| mediocregopher wrote:
| I think fundamentally we're not going to see eye to eye
| on this. I wish you luck on your quest o7
| joconde wrote:
| Living forever might not be that fun. People we know
| would still die for accidental reasons all the time.
| Maybe we can't cope with that for centuries or millennia
| and morale starts to take hits after a while.
| hackingthelema wrote:
| I never said anything about fun. I said I don't want to
| ever die. 'Maybe we can't cope' sounds like a lot to take
| on faith. I'd rather live centuries or millenia and see
| for myself.
| nosianu wrote:
| Not dying would probably mean even more concentration of
| wealth and power. I agree with the OP. If we had some
| idyllic society I might be more tempted to disagree, but
| as it is, those with power are most likely to be able to
| afford the necessary treatments and I don't think they
| are doing a good "leader" job in this world. It would not
| be the humble people living ordinary lives who will
| profit the most from longevity treatments.
|
| In the interest of the future of humanity, I hope we
| don't figure out extreme longevity anytime soon. A few
| more years or even decades, okay, any more and you have
| even more old people at the top of society with even more
| power.
| xvector wrote:
| We already have a concentration of wealth and power. It's
| frightening that you think the solution to that is
| literally _ending_ living, breathing, and dreaming
| _beings_ rather than solving the actual societal issues
| at hand. It is like using a nuclear explosion - with all
| the associated death and destruction - to hammer in a
| nail.
|
| Next time we come across a fundamental social issue,
| should we just kill everyone involved?
|
| We can give people long, happy lives - as long as they
| want - while solving societal issues on a separate track.
| There is no reason to use death as a sledgehammer for an
| issue that is not more valuable than life.
|
| It is, actually, kind of insulting to imply that people
| on the opposite spectrum of the rich don't want to live
| long, don't want to spend time with their family, hopes
| and loves - that they are expendable in the name of
| crudely brute-forcing some arbitrary wealth equation
| which is apparently more important to you than their very
| _lives._
|
| I would be quite happy being poor and getting to spend as
| long as I want with the loves of my life. Being poor
| barely even registers compared to the upside. No amount
| of money can compensate for time spent with loved ones,
| as anyone that has experienced the death of a loved one
| can attest to.
| salmonfamine wrote:
| Yes, I want everyone to die of natural causes after a
| long and fulfilling life. You're an animal. You're
| supposed to die. What do you hope to gain and accomplish,
| sitting around and consuming years after your prime has
| come and gone and your children have grown? Don't you
| know what you are? Don't you have a soul? And please
| don't mistake this for an argument about materialism. Do
| you know why you're alive?
| hackingthelema wrote:
| > What do you hope to gain and accomplish, sitting around
| and consuming years after your prime has come and gone
| and your children have grown?
|
| 1. If immortality is a reality, the health issues that
| come with the disease of aging are likely going to make
| it so your 'prime' lasts forever.
|
| 2. I neither have nor want children
|
| (Edit: Removed bits on my personal beliefs. I don't want
| to get into them right now. I do have views on the soul
| that aren't based in materialism and they result in
| different conclusions than yours.)
| laborat wrote:
| Why not?
| xvector wrote:
| I don't want to be a part of your death cult. Death
| should be a personal choice.
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| > I don't want to be a part of your death cult.
|
| GP said nothing about how or when they wish everyone to
| die. It's as banal a statement as "I wish the earth will
| keep spinning". If GP is in a death cult, so are the
| overwhelming majority of known organisms.
|
| > Death should be a personal choice.
|
| This almost sounds like a satire of Western toxic
| individualism taken to a supernatural extreme. To me, the
| pursuit of immortality looks a lot more like a death cult
| than the acceptance of our finitude does.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| > I think it's a bit like ego thing and positive feedback
| loop. She takes pride in her longevity.
|
| Sounds like she has a mission.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Conversely, I have a 97 year old relative who wants nothing
| more than to die, and yet, nature has cruelly allowed her to
| linger on. When she heard Betty White died, her response was
| "what's her secret".
| DFHippie wrote:
| My grandmother was getting that way toward the end of her
| life. She lived to be 104. More precisely, she thought she
| lived to 104. She died a week short of her birthday, but
| she _thought_ it was her birthday. We were told she cried
| in the morning because her family had forgotten her
| birthday -- we lived in the area and would have come over.
| Then she didn 't make it to the end of the day. This story
| has me wondering whether mistaking the date contributed to
| her death.
| crazynick4 wrote:
| Maybe she has a subconscious conviction that she _will_
| live a long time even though she doesnt _want_ to? The mind
| is a tricky thing..
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Nope, everyone (including her) though she'd be dead
| within a week of her husband passing, but it's been a few
| years now. Married for like 75 years, since they were
| really young, but no kids or grandkids or anything. No
| one had her lasting this long.
| rpmisms wrote:
| In the Soviet Gulags, a lot of people would die immediately
| after their release. Solzhenitsyn described this phenomenon,
| saying they had no struggle left in life after the hell they
| had just gone through.
| dailyrorschach wrote:
| I'm always struck by US Grant in this regard. Suffering of
| debilitating cancer of throat, but convinced by Mark Twain and
| others his memoirs would bring financial benefit to his family
| after a failed business post presidency. He completed them and
| died a few days later, his final mission for his family.
| kingcharles wrote:
| I can understand. It almost killed me trying to read the whole
| damned book.
| xwdv wrote:
| Also if you ever get shot multiple times on your body, do not
| look down at your wounds, if you do you will greatly increase
| your chances of dying right there. You have to continue on and
| ignore them as much as possible.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| In EMT training, you're taught that if someone tells you they're
| going to die, believe them ("feeling of impending doom" IIRC).
| tomaskafka wrote:
| This is terrible to even think about, but this might explain why
| the babies are/were dying in hospitals when alone.
|
| They lose hope, and inhibit their dopamine production to a point
| where it cannot be restarted.
|
| Seems exactly like what Aaron Swartz described here:
| http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hospitalbabies
|
| We still live in barbaric times.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| Do you think this is why when an old couple in love, one does,
| sometimes the partner dies soon afterwards?
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| I'll have to give this a go and see if it works.
| inetknght wrote:
| Are you okay?
| JackFr wrote:
| Literally everyone in these comments has an anecdote, but I
| remain skeptical. The jump from reduced-dopamine-production to
| heart-stops-beating is a little hand-wavy.
|
| What is the concrete mechanism? For instance in the opening
| anecdote in the article, what did the girl die of?
|
| Also I'm put off by statements like "this ability to construct a
| meaningful (or even possible) path into the future is related to
| our dopamine circuits". This has the patina of science, but "is
| related to" is pretty nebulous and "dopamine circuits" are
| constructs of the scientists model rather than physical processes
| in the brain.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I doubt that in any such cases there has been a complex post-
| mortem investigation to accurately determine the cause of
| death.
|
| My father died in this way, but I do not know how.
|
| My mother died suddenly due to a stroke. My father obviously
| became very sad and he said that he had always wished to die
| simultaneously with her. After less than a week he was dead
| too.
|
| At that time he had a form of cancer and it was expected that
| he will live less than a year, but there was no sign that he
| might die so quickly.
|
| He did not change any of his habits, e.g. he ate exactly like
| before. During the last 3 days he was hospitalized and
| apparently he was well taken care of, but that did not help.
|
| Nevertheless, a week was enough for his wish to become true. It
| seems that he had some sort of renal failure and he died during
| the night, but how that happened is unknown.
|
| In any case, after this personal experience I have no doubt
| that people can die when they are convinced that they should.
| JackFr wrote:
| I hesitate to respond - I lost my dad to cancer and by no
| means do I want to trivialize anyone's death. So with all
| respect and sympathy for your personal loss, that's not a
| rigorous analysis.
|
| Had your father not died shortly after your mother he
| wouldn't be a data point against the hypothesis, he simply
| wouldn't have been included in the dataset.
|
| So if we only are including those who die shortly after an
| event, what might otherwise have been dismissed as
| coincidental now looks conclusive.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I agree that is impossible to be certain of a causal
| relationship between his wish to die and his rapid death.
|
| Nevertheless, as a witness of how that happened, I find it
| hard to believe otherwise.
|
| Even if he was already ill, until that week the evolution
| of the cancer had been extremely slow during a couple of
| years and there had been no signs that the previous
| forecasts about his remaining lifetime might need any
| revision.
|
| His condition has deteriorated abruptly in his last 4 days,
| without any apparent external causes, besides his sadness
| and wish to die, so I cannot see any other plausible
| explanation.
|
| While a temporal coincidence cannot be excluded, the
| circumstances were such that I consider this as extremely
| unlikely.
|
| Maybe if he had not been already ill, a death wish might
| not have been able to result in actual death and a weakened
| body is necessary for the mental state to have a such great
| influence.
| [deleted]
| datameta wrote:
| Our expectation of pain actually affects experienced chronic
| pain. Because it isn't strictly bodily damage that is
| responsible for "feeling" pain, it is also how our brain
| processes that sensory information. This is how acute pain
| becomes chronic, the brain "overfits" for detecting that
| sensory input from the nerves to try to bring our attention to
| it more and more, as this might have been evolutionarily
| helpful. But when under treatment during this era of modern
| medicine, dwelling on the pain or feeling helpless about it we
| allow our brain to prioritize the signals as a stressor and
| increase the "pain volume" which ends up being
| counterproductive to our daily lives.
|
| Learning this has allowed me to significantly reduce pain
| medication intake and increase physical activity. Measured and
| steady physical activity is often the solution for chronic
| pain, when convention and intuition dictates that rest is the
| solution. This leads to a cycle of increased stiffness and lack
| of mobility. Pain isn't "just in your head" but understanding
| that the pain experience can be mediated in more ways than
| solely just medication (thankful as I am for it) is empowering
| and hope inducing.
|
| So all that is to say that I am not surprised if it turns out
| our mind can affect our body in the ways stated in this
| article.
| unwoundmouse wrote:
| I'm also curious about the rigor of this argument, don't know
| why you've been downvoted
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