More than 1,500 delegates including people who claim to have had NDEs are attending the one-day conference, which aims to take stock of the disputed phenomenon in the most scientific way possible.
(Via Unknown Country.)
As someone frequently pegged for a hard-core transhumanist, I'm unimpressed by attempts to expunge nonlocal consciousness from the realm of possibility. If pressed, I'd argue that some form of awareness can indeed survive biological death -- a concept that's nothing less that heretical to the reigning "Singularitarian" school of thought. Intead of a mystical impediment, I see this as a potential boon for future technologies -- albeit one that existing paradigms are largely incapable of recognizing, let alone dealing with in a meaningful way.
2 comments:
I try to be open minded about NDEs as well as encounter experiences, because the phenomenon is still so poorly understood. I liken it to the cancer spikes in the 50s, 60s and 70s, when average people had a vague sense that an awful lot of people "seemed" to be dying of lung cancer - a fact pooh-poohed by the medical establishment and government until later confirmation.
btw, I love the word "Singlaritarian". Would adherents be known as "Singularitistas"?
Unfortunately, it's really fashionable for mainline transhumanists to issue trite, dismissive comments about anything they don't understand, which is why I make no attempt to ally myself with them intellectually. I've found, to my dismay, that "fringe" groups
of all sorts love excluding other fringe groups. It's an ego thing.
I like your analogy to cancer spikes.
btw, I love the word "Singlaritarian". Would adherents be known as "Singularitistas"?
I like using the word because
a.) it's actually what the term they use
and
b.) it inadvertantly emphasizes the cult-like mentality that's taken over technological futurism.
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